US chemical industry responsible for 25% of the country’s GDP

The chemical industry in the US was responsible for $5.2 trillion (£4.3 trillion) – or approximately a quarter of the country’s GDP – and employed 4.1 million people in the country in 2020, according to new analysis released by the US National Academies. The report, two years in the making, was drafted by a panel chaired by Mark Wrighton, the president of George Washington University in Washington, DC, a chemist.

A report commissioned by the Royal Society of Chemistry and published in 2010 found that the chemical sciences contributed £258 billion to the UK’s economy – a fifth of the country’s GDP. The European Chemical Industry Council recently estimated that the UK chemicals industry annually invests more than £5.9 billion in R&D, which accounts for over 22% of the nation’s total spending in this area.