Mapping Indiana’s $82B life sciences cluster: Employment, wages and GDP

Workforce + Education Analyst, Indiana Business Research Center, Indiana University Kelley School of Business

Indiana Governor Mike Braun’s $1 billion agriculture and life sciences initiative, announced in March 2026, puts one of Indiana’s most economically distinctive and strategically important industry clusters at the center of the state’s growth strategy.¹

Agriculture and life sciences — spanning pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical devices, agriculture, biotechnology and related research and clinical activities — generates some of the highest wages and economic output of any cluster in the state. Understanding where this cluster is concentrated, and where it’s underdeveloped, is essential for directing investment effectively.

Indeed, in the governor’s announcement, the Central Indiana Regional Development Authority (CIRDA) was highlighted as the first region to offer a growth strategy tying together the region’s human, animal and plant health sectors. This analysis examines the life sciences cluster’s prevalence and economic contribution across Indiana’s READI regions (the multi-county districts formed through the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative to coordinate place-based investment), offering a regional baseline as the initiative moves from announcement to implementation.

An important note: The industry definitions underlying this analysis were developed by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) in consultation with the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) in March and may not yet be final. Additionally, some industries included in the cluster are not exclusively life sciences activities; they may span multiple economic functions in keeping with the agglomeration principle. In those cases, only a proportional share of an industry’s employment and GDP is attributed to the life sciences cluster or to a specific subcluster, rather than the industry’s full totals. The underlying data used for this analysis are sourced from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm that compiles and models employment and wage estimates based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and GDP data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Life sciences employment and wages across READI regions

Figure 1: Life sciences share of total employment by READI region, 2025

Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast 2025 estimates

As Figure 1 shows, life sciences employment is most concentrated in East Central Indiana, where the cluster accounts for 17.1% of total employment — nearly double the 9.4% share recorded in South Central, the lowest-ranked region. The highest shares tend to cluster across the central and northern parts of the state, while other regions to the south, including South Central, Accelerate Rural Indiana and Indiana First, lag behind. These regions are relatively more rural, suggesting that life sciences concentration is thinner in the state’s more sparsely populated areas. However, for South Central, the least rural of the trio, the prevalence of heavy equipment, engine and auto manufacturing at companies like Cummins and Toyota are likely also contributing to the lower employment share in life sciences.

Table 1: Life sciences cluster employment, wages and job growth by READI region, 2025

Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast

Central Indiana dominates the state’s life sciences employment in scale, with 211,375 workers — nearly three times the next-largest region, Northeast Indiana, at 70,606 (see Table 1). Yet when measured as a share of total employment, the cluster is widespread. Ten of the 15 READI regions have a share of their total employment in life sciences of 15% or more, with East Central (17.1%), North Central (16.9%), Southwest (16.7%) and Northeast (16.6%) edging out Central Indiana (16.5%) on that metric. South Central (9.4%), Accelerate Rural Indiana (9.5%) and Indiana First (10.4%) are the exceptions, with life sciences accounting for a notably smaller slice of their local economies.

The wage gap between Central Indiana and the rest of the state is substantial. Central Indiana’s average annual life sciences wage of $100,017 is 34% higher than the next-highest region, Southwest Indiana ($74,617), and nearly 70% above Indiana First ($59,358), which is the lowest in the state. Northeast Indiana’s 70,606 life sciences workers earn an average of $72,432, a meaningful gap from Central Indiana that’s notable given the region’s strong employment base. These differences likely reflect Central Indiana’s concentration of pharmaceutical (Eli Lilly), animal health (Elanco) and chemical manufacturing (Corteva Agriscience) headquarters, which tend to carry higher-wage production, professional and managerial roles.

Job growth from 2019 to 2025 tells an uneven story. Southeast Indiana posted the fastest expansion at 26.4%, adding life sciences jobs at a pace that far outpaced every other region, though its base of 6,485 workers in 2025 remains small. Our Southern Indiana (14.1%), Central Indiana (12.7%) and Indiana Uplands (11.8%) also recorded strong growth, suggesting the cluster is gaining ground in both urban and rural parts of the state. At the other end, Indiana First was the only region to shed life sciences jobs, declining 1.3%, while Greater Lafayette (1.1%) and Southwest Indiana (2.5%) grew only modestly.

Figure 2: Life sciences average wage vs. regional average wage, by READI region, 2025

Note: Sorted by wage premium (life sciences minus all-industry wages)
Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast 2025 estimates

Life sciences jobs pay more than the regional average in every READI region, but, as alluded to previously, the premium varies sharply — from $30,339 in Central Indiana, where life sciences workers earn an average of $100K against an all-industry average of $69,678, down to virtually $0 in South Central, where the two figures are nearly identical at about $66K, respectively (see Figure 2). The outsized premiums in Central Indiana and, to a lesser extent, Northeast ($14,872) and Southwest ($14,693) signal that life sciences employment in those regions is disproportionately concentrated in high-value subsectors mentioned earlier — pharmaceutical manufacturing, biomedical devices and advanced R&D — rather than the lower-wage clinical and residential care roles that are more prevalent in other parts of the state.

Life sciences GDP: Economic output and growth by region

Table 2: Life sciences cluster GDP and wage contribution by READI region, 2025

Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast

As you can imagine, Central Indiana also dominates in contribution to the state’s life sciences GDP by a wide margin, generating $43.1 billion — more than five times the output of the next largest region, Northeast Indiana, at $8 billion (see Table 2). That concentration reflects both the region’s size and its specialization: Life sciences account for 26.5% of Central Indiana’s total regional GDP, the highest share in the state. The sector’s real GDP (meaning it’s been adjusted for inflation) grew 38.6% between 2019 and 2025, adding substantial economic weight to an already large base.

Several smaller regions punch well above their weight when GDP share is compared against their share of total regional economic activity. Indiana Uplands stands out most sharply — life sciences represent 21.3% of its $20 billion regional GDP, a concentration rivaling much larger metros and supported by its 32.5% GDP growth since 2019. The Uplands’ strong economic base and growth is driven by pharma and medical device companies in Bloomington, including Cook Medical, Simtra BioPharma Solutions and Catalent. Southeast Indiana tells a similar story: Life sciences claim 19% of a relatively small $4.1 billion regional economy, with GDP growth of 38.7% over the period — the fastest rate of any region and just slightly above Central Indiana. By contrast, in South Central, Indiana First and Accelerate Rural Indiana, the cluster claims less than 10% GDP share, and South Central is the only region that posted a GDP decline (-10%) over the six-year period. Perhaps it’s the region’s high dependence on advanced manufacturing, including auto and engine parts manufacturing, that has contributed to its retrenchment in terms of life sciences GDP.

What subsectors comprise the life sciences cluster?

Table 3: Life sciences cluster subsectors, Indiana statewide, 2025

Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast

Ambulatory services, hospitals, and residential and nursing care subsectors dominate ag and life sciences employment in Indiana, but the GDP story belongs to drug and biological manufacturing, which is a Central Indiana specialty (think Lilly, Roche, Elanco, etc.). Ambulatory and outpatient services leads all subsectors with 169,127 jobs, followed by hospitals (128,643) and residential and nursing care (80,719) — together accounting for more than half of all life sciences employment statewide (see Table 3). Yet despite their employment scale, these three subsectors generate a combined $32.1 billion in GDP, while drug and biological manufacturing alone produces $20.8 billion from just 23,100 workers. That single subsector accounts for 25.4% of all life sciences GDP, the largest share of any subsector in the cluster, underscoring the capital- and knowledge-intensive nature of pharmaceutical and biologics production.

Wages vary substantially across the cluster, driven by differences in technical specialization, education/training requirements and industry structure. Drug and biological manufacturing posts an average annual wage of $223,354, signaling a workforce engaged in complex, capital-intensive production. Advanced R&D ($124,853) and bio-IT and digital health ($122,166) also stand well above the cluster average. Clinical and regulatory affairs ($89,029), agricultural chemicals ($93,663) and wholesale and distribution ($85,812) round out the upper wage tier. Residential and nursing care, the third-largest subsector by employment, averages the lowest wages at $45,923 annually — a reminder that the cluster’s workforce spans from agriculture to laboratory research to direct patient care.

These patterns carry direct relevance for the agriculture and life sciences initiative. The outsized GDP contribution of drug and biological manufacturing — 25 cents of every dollar of life sciences GDP, generated by fewer than 4% of cluster workers — makes retention and expansion of that subsector a high-leverage economic development priority. Wholesale and distribution further illustrates how life sciences supply chain logistics already punch well above their employment weight in Indiana, generating $7.2 billion in GDP from 31,523 jobs — a contribution exceeding food and beverage processing despite roughly 40% fewer workers.

Meanwhile, the agbiosciences subsectors — agricultural production, agricultural chemicals, agricultural machinery, and veterinary and One Health — collectively employ fewer than 17,300 workers and contribute just $1.97 billion in GDP, a relatively modest footprint given Indiana’s agricultural identity. That gap between the state’s agricultural heritage and the current scale of its agbioscience economy may represent exactly the opportunity the initiative aims to close, with targeted investment in higher-value agbioscience segments potentially driving meaningful wage and GDP growth.

Figure 3: Life sciences employment mix by broad sector, READI region, 2025

Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast 2025 estimates

The Health & Clinical sector dominates the life sciences employment mix in nearly every READI region, but the composition diverges meaningfully at the edges: Central Indiana (anchored by Eli Lilly, Elanco and Corteva Agriscience) and Indiana Uplands (Cook Medical, Catalent, etc.) post the highest Biomedical & Med-Tech shares at 25% and 32.3%, respectively, while North Central and Accelerate Rural Indiana stand out as the most Agbiosciences-intensive regions, with those jobs accounting for 45.3% and 38.3% of their life sciences workforces (see Figure 3). Given their relatively more rural nature and agricultural economic base, it makes sense that Agbiosciences is most prevalent in those regions.

Shift-share analysis reveals competitive dynamics between regions

Not every region that added life sciences jobs between 2019 and 2025 did so in the same manner. Some regions simply rode a statewide wave of expansion: They grew because Indiana’s life sciences cluster grew, not because of anything distinctive about their local economies. Others benefited from concentrating in faster-growing subsectors, such as medical devices or biologics manufacturing, rather than slower-growing ones. Still others outpaced the state within individual subsectors, growing jobs at rates that cannot be explained by statewide trends alone. Shift-share analysis separates these three forces — the Indiana growth effect, the industry mix effect and the competitive effect — so we can see what actually drove each READI region’s performance.

Of the three components, the competitive effect is the most revealing. It measures how much a region over- or underperformed Indiana’s growth rate after accounting for both the statewide “tide” and the region’s particular industry mix. A positive competitive effect means regional employers added jobs faster than the state as a whole — a signal that something specific about the region, whether workforce depth, proximity to anchor research institutions, infrastructure or business climate, is generating a genuine locational advantage. A negative competitive effect, by contrast, suggests a region is losing ground even within subsectors where Indiana as a whole is expanding, which points to structural challenges worth examining.

The industry mix effect captures whether a region’s particular composition of life sciences subsectors worked in its favor. A region concentrated in biologics manufacturing, for instance, would have benefited from a favorable mix if that subsector grew faster statewide than the cluster overall, regardless of how regional employers performed within it. The Indiana growth effect describes the baseline tide all regions rode; the industry mix effect tells you whether a region’s portfolio of subsectors worked in its favor; and the competitive effect goes furthest toward explaining why some regions outperformed others.

Table 4: Shift-share analysis of life sciences employment change by READI region, 2019–2025

Note: Sorted by competitive effect
Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast

Central Indiana dominates in absolute terms, but the more telling story is its competitive effect. Central Indiana added 23,766 jobs, far exceeding any other region (see Table 4). Its competitive effect of +3,956 jobs signals that local employers are outpacing peers in other regions with growth rooted in genuine locational advantage, not just the region’s size. A favorable industry mix added another 3,643 jobs, meaning Central Indiana is also concentrated in the life sciences subsectors that grew fastest across the state. Together, these two components account for roughly one-third of the region’s total gain, a meaningful structural advantage on top of its size.

Several smaller regions punch above their weight on competitive strength. Indiana Uplands posted a competitive effect of +1,733 jobs — the second highest in the state (see Figure 4) — despite a negative industry mix effect of -793 jobs that reflects concentration in slower-growing subsectors. Southeast (+955) and Our Southern Indiana (+855) also recorded strong competitive effects relative to their size, suggesting regional cluster momentum rather than riding on the state’s coattails. South Bend-Elkhart, by contrast, added 2,848 jobs but generated a competitive effect of only +104. Its manufacturing heritage skews toward auto and RV production rather than pharmaceuticals, and the competitive numbers suggest the region is not yet outpacing statewide peers within life sciences subsectors.

The weakest competitive positions are concentrated in regions where life sciences employment grew well below what statewide trends alone would have predicted. Southwest (-1,933), Greater Lafayette (-1,710), Northwest (-1,088), Northeast (-859) and Indiana First (-685) all underperformed on the competitive dimension, and Northeast’s industry mix effect of -2,801 is the largest drag in the state, indicating heavy concentration in subsectors that grew slowly or contracted statewide. Indiana First is the only region to record an actual job loss (-74), driven entirely by its competitive deficit of -685 jobs overwhelming a modest Indiana growth effect of +502. Accelerate Rural Indiana essentially broke even on competitive effect (-20), but its total gain of only 256 jobs reflects a small base rather than competitive weakness per se. For policymakers targeting cluster development, the competitive effect is the clearest signal of where local conditions — workforce, infrastructure, anchor institutions or business climate — are either reinforcing or undermining life sciences growth.

Figure 4: Life sciences competitive effect by READI region, 2019–2025 (shift-share analysis)

Note: Positive = region outperformed Indiana’s statewide growth
Source: Author’s calculations and Lightcast 2025 estimates

Conclusion

Indiana’s life sciences cluster is a substantial economic force, employing roughly 573K workers and generating approximately $81.9 billion in GDP statewide. Central Indiana anchors the cluster, with 211K life sciences jobs and a GDP greater than half the state’s ($43.1B) — but the data show meaningful cluster presence across multiple READI regions. That geographic spread means the sector’s economic footprint extends well beyond the Indianapolis metro, touching labor markets and supply chains throughout the state.

The foundation is already in place as the initiative moves toward implementation. Regions with higher life sciences employment and above-average wages — indicators of existing cluster density and talent pools with the right skills and experience — are positioned to translate new capital into faster job growth and stronger GDP gains. Where the cluster is underdeveloped, investment may first need to build the workforce and infrastructure conditions that drive multiplier effects. That calculus looks different depending on whether the goal is maximizing near-term economic returns or building long-run capacity in regions where the cluster has yet to take hold. Both are legitimate uses of the data. The regional distribution mapped here offers a starting point for either approach.