Sometimes, health is in the eye of the beholder. You can feel great and have an LDL cholesterol count ticking above 300. Or you can ace your annual physical, but still attribute every stray ache or pain to impending doom.
That’s useful to keep in mind when paging through the latest pulse check on New Jersey’s biotech sector. A survey released by the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey finds employment by Garden State biotechs increased 28 percent from 2003 to 2006.

As of last year, the nation’s medicine chest claimed 10,071 biotech workers, up from 7,800 four years ago. Average pay for those jobs was $86,000. The subheading of the report accentuates the positive: “A Robust State of Health.”

Still, how healthy is healthy? It’s no secret more and more states are trying to make their chops in biotechnology, what with the high-paying jobs and the chance of catching a tiger by the tail. So how does growth in the nation’s medicine chest stack up? It’s not easy to tell.

Massachusetts reviewed its life sciences industry earlier this year, and found its biotech sector grew almost 21 percent over three years. But its timeframe was 2001 through 2004, and the firm that compiled the data was PricewaterhouseCoopers — not Deloitte, which handled New Jersey’s report.

Oh well. In the absence of definitive data, the nation’s medicine chest will just continue to feel good about itself.

Thanks to Jeff May of The Star-Ledger of New Jersey