Fact of the Week: The 2,500 Companies That Together Account for 90 Percent of the World’s Business R&D Are Hiring Workers Faster Than the Population Is Growing

Companies invest in innovation to be competitive and to ensure their long-term financial success, and in so doing they create jobs and spur productivity. The European Commission’s 2016 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard underscores this dynamic by monitoring the R&D investments of 2,500 global companies that invest the most in R&D. Indeed, together, they invest almost $735 billion in R&D, which accounts for 90 percent of all business R&D worldwide.

In fiscal year 2016, these 2,500 companies increased their R&D investments by 6.6 percent year-over-year. It was the fifth consecutive year in which they increased their total R&D investments, and over this same period they added 1.3 percent more employees—meaning they added jobs faster than the 1.1 percent growth rate of the world’s population.