Examining the economic impact of key sectors of the economy is vital to the Bank’s mission to support a strong and stable economy. Hospitals and higher education institutions, often called “eds and meds,” are important industries for inclusive job growth, as well as local and regional economic health.

Communities, cities, and states have long relied on these anchor institutions to employ residents, to invest in community development projects, and to keep regions healthy and provide education, all of which fuel and sustain the local and regional economies.

But anchor institutions also play a large role in economic mobility — as they provide stable, quality jobs that allow people to move up the economic ladder.

To better understand the economic impacts of hospitals and higher education institutions on state economies, state-level measures of anchor institution impacts are now available for 2019 and 2004, complementing regional-level data available on the Anchor Economy Dashboard. Download the state-by-state breakdown of the data.

These data provide policymakers, community leaders, and decision makers with a robust snapshot of higher education and hospital economic activity, income, and gross value added within each state. Also provided is a reliance index, which shows how dependent each state is on these sectors for total economic output. More details on how this information was collected can be found here.