There’s been a lot of negativity in the life science tools market recently, at least with regards to the economic outlook. European government austerity, a possible US sequester, and cooling Asian economies have given a lot of people a sense of unease (or downright fear) about sector growth. Over the past two months, however, there’s a bunch of data that says things probably aren’t going to be so bad after all.

Back in late February, a MarketsandMarkets study projected the life science and chemical instrumentation market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4% from 2011 to 2016. Morgan Stanley analyst Daniel Brennan then noted in early March that commercial sales of publicly traded life science instrument companies had been stronger than expected and is less vulnerable to the economy than many had feared. A DeciBio study released last week projected that the life science tools market will grow by about 4% per year over the next 5 years. Sure, 4% isn’t a great growth rate, but it’s certainly enough to sustain the industry. Last Thursday, Goldman Sachs analyst Isaac Ro said that company performance in the life science tools industry for the first quarter of 2012 “appears to have trended better than initially expected” and noted that academic spending trends have improved.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we’re in the clear, and there are certainly still hurdles the industry faces moving forward, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. The life science tools market isn’t in nearly as bad of shape as many had feared.