Notes

  1. 1 For further background see Anderson, Jankowski, and Boroush (2023) and https://ncses.nsf.gov/data-collections/national-patterns/2021-2022#methodology.

  2. 2 For longer-term U.S. R&D trends, see Anderson, Jankowski, and Boroush (2023) and Anderson (2024). All comparative statements in this report have undergone statistical testing and are significant at the 90% confidence level except statements reliant on modeled estimates.

  3. 3 Starting in 2016, the business R&D data reported by the National Patterns series include the R&D expenditures reported by microbusinesses (generally, companies with fewer than 10 employees). These new statistics come from NCSES surveys fielded for 2016 and onward: the 2016 Business R&D and Innovation Survey–Microbusiness, which collected statistics on the R&D activities of businesses with 1–5 employees, and for 2017–18, the Annual Business Survey (ABS), which collected statistics on the R&D activities of businesses with 1–9 employees. The totals for business R&D performance are $4 billion to $5 billion higher for 2016 and beyond as a result of microbusiness R&D being included.

  4. 4 The National Patterns statistics for higher education R&D appearing in this report adjust the academic fiscal year basis of NCSES’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey data to calendar year and net out pass-throughs of research funds to remove double counting in the national totals. Accordingly, the higher education statistics included in this report differ from those cited in the Indicators 2024 report “Academic Research and Development.” For further details, see https://ncses.nsf.gov/data-collections/national-patterns/2021-2022#methodology.

  5. 5 FFRDCs are R&D-performing organizations that are exclusively or substantially financed by the federal government. An FFRDC is operated to provide R&D capability to serve federal agency mission objectives or, in some cases, to provide major facilities at universities for research and associated training purposes. Each FFRDC is administered by an industrial firm, a university, a nonprofit institution, or a consortium. NCSES maintains a current Master Government List of Federally Funded R&D Centers available at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/.

  6. 6 Business funding refers to funding for domestic R&D performed by the business sector, higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations, and FFRDCs. U.S. R&D funded and performed by the business sector (by far the largest component as noted above) comprises own company funds of domestic R&D-performing businesses, funds from other domestic businesses, and funds from foreign businesses.

  7. 7 Although key data features are noteworthy, care is needed in definitively identifying trends by type of R&D. Various methodological improvements in NCSES R&D performer surveys—but no material revisions in the type-of-R&D definitions (OECD 2015)—have been made over time, particularly before 2010, with the net implication that small percentage changes in the reported shares may not be meaningful.

  8. 8 U.S. GERD as reported by OECD differs slightly from the U.S. total domestic R&D performance tabulated earlier in this report. For consistency with international standards for the measurement of GERD, OECD includes U.S. domestic expenditures on capital for R&D, excludes depreciation on U.S. domestic R&D capital, and makes certain adjustments for foreign sources of funding of domestic R&D.

  9. 9 For international comparative measures of other forms of R&D support by governments such as tax incentives, see the OECD INNOTAX Portal (OECD 2023f).

  10. 10 The global total is based on 2021 or, for countries with missing data in the OECD database, the latest available year. In contrast with previous editions of this report, comparable data on R&D were not available from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization database, where most non-OECD R&D statistics were obtained.

  11. 11 For methodological information on updated country statistics, see OECD (2023g).

  12. 12 Separately, businesses also have R&D capital expenditures—payments for long-lived assets to support R&D activities. Businesses that performed or funded U.S. R&D in 2020 had $32.5 billion in R&D capital expenditures (Moris and Shackelford 2023a).

  13. 13 For foreign R&D by multinational enterprises, see Bureau of Economic Analysis (2022) and Moris (2021).

  14. 14 For more information, see https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/business-enterprise-research-development/2020#survey-info for the BERD Survey and https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/annual-business-survey/2021#survey-info for the ABS. Microbusinesses are a small but important segment of business R&D and innovation. See Anderson and Kindlon (2019) and Knott and Vieregger (2020).

  15. 15 At the same time, the U.S. R&D manufacturing share has declined over the years. See BERD Survey Table 59, Domestic R&D paid for by the company and others and performed by the company, by industry and company size: 2008–21, available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/business-enterprise-research-development/2021#data.

  16. 16 Motor vehicle statistics include but do not separate out electric vehicles.

  17. 17 Statistics on U.S. state trends in R&D, S&E education, workforce, patents and publications, and knowledge-intensive industries are also available in the Science and Engineering Indicators State Indicators data tool at https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators/states.

  18. 18 Selected below state–level statistics are also available from the NCSES BERD Survey (Shackelford and Wolfe 2019). For upcoming statistics on regional R&D within GDP accounts, see https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics, and for more on R&D investment in U.S. GDP statistics, see Moris (2019) and Moylan and Okubo (2020).

  19. 19 R&D-intensive manufacturing industries may engage in advanced manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing. Examples include additive or nano-based manufacturing and biotechnology and biomanufacturing. For additional information, see Brocal, Sebastián, and González (2019) and President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2020).

  20. 20 Companies could report expenditure on the same R&D project in one, more than one, or no technology category.

  21. 21 This share was 32% in 2016 and 20% in 2006 (Moris 2019).

  22. 22 For more information on CHIPS, IIJA, and IRA, see Pece (2024).

  23. 23 See https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6227 (accessed 15 August 2023). Agencies participating in NQI efforts include the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NSF, DOE, DOD, NASA, the National Security Agency, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity unit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. For more details, see (SCQIS/NSTC 2023). For related defense authorization legislation and possible technical applications in this area, see CRS (2022c).

  24. 24 See https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ329/PLAW-114publ329.pdf and https://www.nitrd.gov/ (accessed 15 August 2023). Participating agencies with a program component area for AI R&D in FY 2021 include Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Homeland Security, DOD, DOE, Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Education, NASA, HHS, Department of Justice (DOJ), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NSF, and Department of Agriculture (USDA). For more details, see (NITRD/NAIIO 2022).

  25. 25 See www.congress.gov/108/plaws/publ153/PLAW-108publ153.pdf and (NSET/NSTC 2023). Participating agencies in FY 2021 include Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Commerce, DOD, DOE, DOI, DOJ, DOT, Environmental Protection Agency, HHS, NASA, NSF, and USDA.