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Cuts to research have much further reaching impact than a Facebook employee. Lab personnel have more tentacles branching to various support staff. Fewer lab people = fewer support staff jobs. Equipment maintenance, training, and repair. Core support staff for specialized equipment/tasks. Labs also = continuous procurement of consumables to run the experiments. A post doc at a university is probably $100k+ impact per. An established scientist could easily be $500k+. Shut down entire labs and that could balloon from there downstream. Research isn’t cheap and that’s a large reason that the government has been so involved. Industry only focuses on things with higher probability to drive higher profits.I think we should probably include that in the category of DOGE carnage.
I'm not sure just how big an effect this will have. I've been trying to get my head around it a little bit, but obviously the lack of any transparency makes that really hard.
On one hand, it sure seems like a lot of people. On the other hand, the economy is really big. Facebook laid off 15K workers not long ago, IIRC. How much a ripple effect did that have? And is the scale of research cuts much higher than that? Chevron is laying off 20K. Now, facebook workers are unlikely to face a serious cash crunch, so they probably didn't have to adjust their consumption patterns as much as a lab tech or post-doc. So there's that. Still, take Vanderbilt, for instance (since it was one of the schools publicly announcing how it would be struggling). What % of the Nashville population works at Vanderbilt? Layoffs and freezes at Vanderbilt -- what % of the population is that?
It could hurt smaller communities that are more dependent on a university. Back in the day, something like this would pulverize the Chapel Hill economy. That might still be true, although I don't really know how much RTP buffers for that. But schools like Bucknell (Lewisburg, PA), RPI (Troy NY), VPI (Blacksburg WVa) are the main industries in their localities and cutback could definitely ripple. On the other hand, those communities are small and their rise or fall doesn't do much to the local economy.
In terms of state schools, U of M is in Ann Arbor and it really supports the local community. Missouri is in Columbia, which isn't very big. You'd know places like OK, Kansas, Nebraska better than me. Wherever Penn State is, it's most of the economy. Michigan State is in East Lansing, which is small and from what I understand not all that connected to Lansing (which itself is not all that big).
But again, it remains to be seen just how many people are getting laid off. 1,000 people at U of M sounds like a lot, but what % of the U of M workforce is that? I don't know.
China has already passed us in some areas. They are trying to lure our researchers already and willing to pay.
It’s also not just universities that could take the hit. There are companies in RTP that also would be impacted. North Carolina ranks in the top 3 states for the amount of NIH funding. Over $1 billion. RTP has already taken multiple hits over the years with some of the big pharmaceutical companies moving out. It remains to be seen what impact there will be on the EPA, NIEHS, the CDC, and a few other federal organizations currently operating in RTP. This would further destabilize the economy.