Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) today introduced the Biotechnology Workforce Alignment Act of 2026 alongside Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) as part of a bipartisan legislative package.
The bill aims to ensure America's biotechnology workforce keeps pace with the nation's growing research and manufacturing ambitions.
The package pairs Rep. McCormick's original bill with Rep. Khanna's Federal Biotechnology Workforce Assessment Act of 2026, forming a comprehensive, two-pronged strategy to identify workforce gaps and take decisive action to close them.
When commenting on this bill, Rep. McCormick emphasized the need for the United States to maintain its lead in the biotechnology sector. He discussed the role of the federal government in aligning research with workforce development, framing it as "commonsense" policymaking.
"America leads the world in biotechnology, and we need to keep it that way. Right now, we're making historic investments in biotech research and biomanufacturing,” Rep. McCormick stated. “Still, we're leaving talent on the table because we don't have a coordinated strategy to build the workforce that industry actually needs. This legislation fixes that.”
He continued, “By aligning federal research priorities with real workforce development and getting a clear-eyed assessment of our gaps, we can ensure America stays ahead of our adversaries and continues to lead the world in the industries of tomorrow. This is exactly the kind of commonsense, results-driven governing that Americans deserve."
The Bill
The United States is rapidly scaling its biotechnology research and biomanufacturing capacity, but federal workforce development programs have not kept up.
Despite significant federal investment in biotech R&D, there is no coordinated national workforce strategy.
The result is persistent talent shortages across critical fields, including biomanufacturing, synthetic biology, computational biology, omics sciences, and regulatory science.
The Biotechnology Workforce Alignment Act of 2026 will direct the National Science Foundation (NSF) to align federal biotechnology research priorities with workforce development efforts. It also directs the NSF to strengthen partnerships across education, industry, and government, ensuring that training programs are built around real-world industry needs.
