How to cite

Lasarte López, Jesús; González Hermoso, Hugo; Tamošiūnas, Saulius; M'barek, Robert (2025): Socioeconomic indicators for the Life Sciences sectors. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] PID: http://data.europa.eu/89h/f2f29d1d-bf15-447f-a48f-6a4fa08d0022

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• Lasarte-López, J., González-Hermoso, H., M’barek, R. The Life Sciences sectors in the UE: drivers of economic growth and innovation. European Commission, Seville, 2025, JRC142396.
• Ronzon, T. et al. An output-based measurement of EU bioeconomy services: Marrying statistics with policy insight. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. 2022, 60, 290-301.
• Lasarte-Lopez, J., Mbarek, R., Ronzon, T., & Tamosiunas, S. (2023). EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System indicators update. Jobs and value added in the bioeconomy.
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Sector scope

The table below shows the details on the selected activities considered under the three main areas that fall under the scope of this study, including the codes from the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE hereinafter).

1. The primary activities, food and bio-based manufacturing activities were selected following the methodological approach described in Ronzon et al. (2017), Ronzon & M’barek (2018) and Ronzon et al. (2022) to delimit bioeconomy-related activities. For this, an output-based criterion is applied, meaning that only economic activities whose output is made (fully or partially) of bio-based content are considered. This includes sectors that only produce or process biomass (e.g. agriculture or food manufacturing), as well as those sectors whose production is only partially bio-based (e.g. chemicals or furniture manufacturing).
2. Regarding human health technologies and services, the activities related to the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals (both bio and non-bio), medical tools and equipment, as well as healthcare activities are taken into account.
3. Last, the horizontal knowledge-based activities refer to supporting services and expertise, such as scientific R&D, technical professions, veterinary, and education, which are based on the development and application of scientific knowledge and technologies related to Life Sciences. These activities play a critical role in driving innovation and improving competitiveness across the Life Sciences sectors.

Definitions

Three economic indicators have been estimated for the selected sectors in this document: Number of persons employed, Value Added (million Euro) and Business Expenditure on R&D (million Euro).

Number of persons employed:
The number of persons employed is defined as the total number of persons who work in the observation unit (inclusive of working proprietors, partners working regularly in the unit and unpaid family workers working regularly in the unit), as well as persons who work outside the unit who belong to it and are paid by it (e.g. sales representatives, delivery personnel, repair and maintenance teams). It includes persons absent for a short period (e.g. sick leave, paid leave or special leave), and also those on strike, but not those absent for an indefinite period. It also includes part-time workers who are regarded as such under the laws of the country concerned and who are on the pay-roll, as well as seasonal workers, apprentices and home workers on the pay-roll.

Value added (Million euros):
Value added refers to the value added at factor costs. It is the gross income from operating activities after adjusting for operating subsidies and indirect taxes. Value adjustments (such as depreciation) are not subtracted.

Business expenditure on R&D:
Total costs incurred by companies with the purpose of creating new knowledge or applying existing knowledge to develop new or significantly improved products, processes, or services.

Data sources

The data on value added, and employment is primarily retrieved from Structural Business Statistics (SBS) in Eurostat. Data up to 2020 is extracted from the following databases: sbs_na_ind_r2 for Industry, sbs_na_con_r2 for Construction, and sbs_na_1a_se_r2 for Services. For data from 2021 onwards, the sbs_ovw_dataset is used. Additionally, National Accounts databases from Eurostat (nama_10_a64 and nama_10_a64_e) are utilized for sectors not covered by SBS, such as primary production activities. Regarding R&D investment, data is retrieved from the Business Expenditure on Research and Development by NACE Rev. 2 activity (rd_e_berdindr2) database. To address missing data, the procedure outlined in Lasarte-López et al. (2023) is applied.

Estimation of socioeconomic indicators

Primary production, food and bio-based manufacturing
The figures for primary production, food and bio-based manufacturing activities were prepared using the methodology proposed by Ronzon et al. (2017), Ronzon & M’barek (2018) and Ronzon et al. (2022), as well as Wydra & Kroll (2024) for R&D indicators. These approaches involve reporting values from sectors with fully bio-based output as provided by Eurostat (after estimating missing data), while for partially bio-based sectors, the data must be combined with bio-based shares to derive the contribution from bio-based activities in terms of employment, value added and R&D investment.
The applied bio-based shares inform on the proportion of production by sector which is made of biomass. These shares are initially prepared at the product level through a survey of sector experts, who determine the bio-based content of each item from the PRODCOM product classification. These shares are then applied to the value of sold production by product category as a proxy to estimate the value of the bio-based production. This value is then aggregated by both NACE activities and Member States and compared to the total production value by sector to derive sector-level bio-based shares. The shares are applied to the value of the selected socioeconomic indicators by sector as a proxy to estimate the contribution of bio-based activities to said indicators. Further details on these shares can be found in by Ronzon et al. (2017), Ronzon & M’barek (2018).

Human health technologies and services
For the human health technologies and services, no specific share is applied, as they are considered fully relevant to the life sciences.

Scientific and knowledge-based activities
For scientific and knowledge-based activities, proxies based on its relation to Life Sciences to estimate its socioeconomic contribution. In general, the computation of shares by bioeconomy-relevant services is applied as proposed by [4], with specific adjustments to some sectors to take into account healthcare-relevant activities.

• For Education (NACE P85), a share informing on expenditure and employment in bioeconomy- and healthcare-relevant fields within tertiary education is applied.
• For technical professions (NACE M71, M73, M74) and Scientific research and development (NACE M72), the share is applied as proposed in [4].
• No adjustments are needed for Veterinary (M75), as it is considered entirely relevant to life sciences.

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