From 2001 to present, roughly 300,000 pharmaceutical employees have lost their jobs. That is a massive number; second only to the job losses in the automotive and financial services industries. The main reasons for the layoffs have been a lack of return on investment on R&D activities and impending patent cliffs in 2013 for as many as 15 blockbuster drugs.
Ed Silverman who runs the Pharmalot blog speculated in a post yesterday that the number of pharma layoffs may be dwindling. His assertions are based on an analysis of the annual number of pharma layoffs provided by the outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Ed’s wrote:
“So far this year, pharma layoffs have totaled 19,076, and this includes the 13,000 job cuts planned by Merck, which is actually eyeing many foreign positions, therefore, swelling the latest tally. Last year, pharma eliminated 53,636 jobs, down from 61,109 in 2009, when annual layoffs peaked. In fact, the 2009 bloodletting was outsized compared with every other year - the next highest annual layoff tally occurred in 2008, when 43,014 industry cuts were announced. Between 2003 and 2007, the number of jobs that were eliminated ranged from about 15,000 to 31,000 annually, according to the firm.”
This led Ed to posit that the worst may be over and those pharma employees who still have jobs may be able to relax a bit. However, it is important to note (as Ed also points out) that many big companies are still purchasing or opening new R&D and manufacturing facilities in emerging markets like India and China and more and more R&D jobs are being outsourced. Further, while many US pharma reps have lost their jobs hiring reps in emerging markets continues to explode. Interestingly jobs that are in demand and still available to Americans include those in regulatory affairs, compliance, IT, clinical operations and marketing. Unfortunately, these are very specialized jobs and many of those pharma employees who have been layed off lack the requisite skills to compete for those jobs!
While I think we may have seen the last of massive layoff in big pharma, smaller and less publicized layoffs will likely continue at many US life sciences companies. The downsizing trend taking place in America will likely continue until drug pipelines are populated with new candidates and life science executive realize that outsourcing R&D job is not a viable solution for their productivity problems.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!
I received a heads-up from the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Sergio Lewis about a free webinar entitled “How to Secure and Nurture a Vibrant Chemistry Career in the 21st Century.” The webinar is scheduled for December 1, 2011 from 2:00-3:00 PM and will be led by Brian Fahie, PhD from Eli Lilly & Co. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session..gif)
I had little to do last night, so I decided to download Stumble Upon for Firefox. While I was stumbling, I came across an 
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