PENNSYLVANIA State leads N.J. in drug industry

The manufacturers produce relatively few jobs, however.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Pennsylvania has overtaken New Jersey as the nation's largest producer of drugs and the ingredients used to make them, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Over the past five years, Pennsylvania's pharmaceutical industry has matured into a $19 billion industry and is the state's largest manufacturing sector after food, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of federal data Sunday.
More than half of the drug plants licensed by the Food and Drug Administration are in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs. Those plants produce Tylenol, Mylanta, Pepcid, Listerine, Neosporin, St. Joseph's aspirin and Lubriderm, as well as hundreds of generic and prescription drugs, over-the-counter pills, vitamin supplements and vaccines.
"About the only two growth industries in the 'Rust Belt' are health care and government," said Jim Panyard, president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association in Harrisburg. "God bless them, they're employing people... . Everything else is on the ropes."
As recently as 1997, the "pharmaceutical and medicine" industry in Pennsylvania ranked below that of basic steel, metal stampings, heavy machinery and electronics, according to the Annual Survey of Manufactures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since then, the dollar output of steel plants plummeted, while the output of pharmaceuticals, medicine and medical devices rose 71 percent, to $19.3 billion.
Impact on employment
However, the drug industry is automated to an extent that it produces relatively few jobs. There are only about 27,000 pharmaceutical company workers in the state, with 85 percent in the Philadelphia region.
And drug jobs in Pennsylvania could be lost to other states offering financial incentives.
"We are being wooed by ... Virginia and Indiana, and we were shocked by the inattention given to us by Pennsylvania," said Richard H. Roberts, president and chief executive officer of Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. Inc., a generic drug company in Philadelphia. "There has been almost nothing done to keep us here."
For years, New Jersey had more pharmaceutical production, headquarters and research than any other state in the nation. But mergers have resulted in layoffs, and drug company executives say taxes and traffic congestion make them want to leave the state.
As recently as 1997, New Jersey plants manufactured $13 billion in pharmaceuticals and medicines, the most in the nation. But New Jersey's output had increased to only $13.8 billion by 2001, and the state was surpassed by Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California.