Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri
Executive Summary:
This report evaluates the economic impact of Exact Sciences Corporation on the Dane County and broader Wisconsin economy. Exact Sciences, headquartered in Madison, has grown from 19 employees and $4.8 million in revenue in 2009 to approximately 7,200 employees globally (around half are in Wisconsin, primarily in Dane County) and $3.2 billion in revenue by 2025, driven primarily by the commercial success of Cologuard, a non-invasive colorectal cancer screening test approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August 2014.
- To estimate what Dane County’s economy would have looked like without Exact Sciences, we use a synthetic control approach: we construct a weighted combination of eleven similar Midwestern university counties to serve as a statistical “twin” for Dane County, tracking the period before the firm’s 2009 relocation from Massachusetts. By 2024, Dane County’s life sciences employment exceeded this benchmark by approximately 3,500 jobs—closely matching Exact Sciences’ local workforce—while total employment exceeded the benchmark by approximately 23,200 jobs and county GDP by $6.6 billion.
- Applying the local labor market multiplier of 4.9 estimated by Moretti (2010) for hightechnology employment, Exact Sciences’ approximately 3,500 Dane County life sciences jobs imply an additional 17,150 jobs in the local nontradable sector, for a total employment impact of approximately 20,650 jobs. This accounts for the vast majority of the 23,200-job gap between Dane County and its synthetic counterpart, suggesting that Exact Sciences—through both direct employment and multiplier effects—is the primary driver of the county’s outperformance.
- A complementary state-level synthetic control analysis finds a medical laboratory employment gap of over 4,000 jobs for Wisconsin relative to other Midwestern states. Scaling the county-level GDP estimates by the ratio of state-to-county life sciences employment gaps, we estimate that Exact Sciences contributes approximately $6–7 billion to Wisconsin’s GDP, or roughly 1.7–2.0% of the state’s $354.4 billion economy. Under a more conservative multiplier of 3 (vs. Moretti’s 4.9), the estimated statewide GDP impact is approximately $4.9 billion, or roughly 1.4% of state GDP.
- Exact Sciences’ growth has been anchored by the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University Research Park, which provided the talent pipeline, research infrastructure, and physical campus that attracted the firm from Massachusetts in 2009. The firm has in turn deepened Madison’s life sciences ecosystem, contributing to employment growth across professional services, construction, and related sectors.