Does killing your parents makes you an orphan?

Sorry for the trolly title, but that's what I was reminded of when I saw this article (via commenter Paul at In the Pipeline):

Biosciences added 96,000 jobs from 2001 through 2010, a jump of 6.4 percent, the Biotechnology Industry Organization and research firm Battelle said in report last week during an industry convention in Boston. The U.S. economy lost about 3.6 million private-sector jobs in that time, a decline of about 3 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Employment at laboratory companies, such as Princeton, N.J., contract researcher Covance Inc., rose 24 percent in the period and was the only area of biosciences to expand during the 2007-2010 recessionary cycle, climbing 6.1 percent, according to the report. 

Labs employed more than 450,000 people in 2010, or almost 3 in 10 U.S. bioscience industry workers. “This reflects the outsourcing of many research and testing services previously done in-house by major biopharmaceutical companies, as well as the rise of molecular diagnostic testing,” Battelle and BIO said in the report. 

Of course, Covance is the company that purchased Lilly's clinical research site in Greenfield, IN in Lilly's first employee-jettisoning swaparoo and acquired most of the employees in the deal (at a lower wage? That, I do not know.)

It would seem to me that outsourcing is not a great indicator of job growth, but I'm no economist.