With the future of the tax extenders package still uncertain, lobbyists are scrambling to make sure the R&D tax credit gets attached to a bill — any bill — and soon. The National Association of Manufacturers, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Business Roundtable, and the R&D Credit Coalition are all out in force on the Hill right now.

The keen interest of groups like those first two explains why certain cynical types — well, maybe just me actually — have referred to the R&D credit as the Full Employment for Scientists and Engineers Act.

No question, the credit is a job generator. A new brief from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reviews some of the academic research, which suggests that for every dollar the credit keeps out of the government’s coffers, anything from $1.10 to $2.96 of R&D investment is generated. So if you amp up the credit, you get a major boost to employment, ITIF argues.

What kind of employment? Well, many of the jobs “would be created in scientific fields that employ high-skilled, high-wage workers” like physicists, biochemists, and biophysicists. You’d also get science technician jobs that require “only” a bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree, or two years of training. Then there would also be production work and back-office jobs in research equipment suppliers, and finally there’s all the jobs that would be generated when all those people spend their paychecks in restaurants and bookstores or whatever, i.e., the familiar “multiplier” effect.

Businesses and workers that are not particularly tech-centered might be forgiven for not being too thrilled by this. You have to wonder why science and technology should be privileged over other kinds of creative economic activity, especially when tech businesses, despite the availability of the credit, have been offshoring their R&D by the boatload in recent years — not to mention their production jobs, a focus of innovation in themselves.

It’s true that the credit can and should be used (assuming it’s renewed) by a much wider range of companies than currently benefit from it, as I noted here. But as far as job creation goes, you can’t help wishing for something that paints with a broader brush. ###