Dr. Joshua Drucker Discusses the NASA Economic Impact Analysis on Podcast

Dr. Joshua Drucker was interviewed by the Planetary Radio Podcast on the NASA Economic Impact Analysis authored and produced by the Voorhees Center. The Planetary Radio Podcast is produced by the Planetary Society, a nonprofit founded by Carl Sagan and currently led by Bill Nye (a.k.a. the Science Guy) that is dedicated to empowering citizens to advance space science.

Interviewed alongside Alex MacDonald, Chief Economist at the Office of the NASA Administrator, Drucker discussed the purpose of the report, how the Voorhees Center developed the economic model, and the challenges they faced in the process. He also described the findings – how NASA’s expenditures move throughout the country and the impact that NASA activities have on the country’s supply chain and economy at local and regional levels. He touched on the importance of developing a new economic model and practice for collecting more reliable data around NASA’s economic impact on a local and regional scale.

The NASA Economic Impact Analysis estimates direct, indirect, and induced impacts and quantifies the changes in employment, income, levels of business activity, and government revenue throughout the entire economy that result from NASA’s activities. The report finds that, at the national level, NASA supports labor income of $25.7 billion per year and an estimated economic output of $71.2 billion annually. It addresses issues that are key to a wide variety of public policy decision makers, including state and local governments.