Pharmaceutical Job Cuts Exceed 50,000 in 2010

Despite signs earlier this summer that job cuts at pharmaceutical companies were beginning to slow, it appears that the number of jobs lost in 2010 may come close to the roughly 61,000 pharmaceutical jobs that were eliminated in 2009. This is based on quarterly Job-Cut Announcement Report published by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. 

In past month or so, two big pharma companies, Roche and Novartis, announced that there will be major corporate reorganizations and deep job cuts to reduce spending, increase profits and bolster flagging stock prices. 

While things appear to be improving in other parts of the economy, the life sciences industry has been devastated by massive job layoffs in the past three years. Although pharma executives publicly blame the downsizing on the recession, massive R&D units, thinning pipelines and a failure to obtain a sufficient ROI on the huge sums of money poured into new drug development over the past decade are the real reason for the blood letting. Unfortunately, the US job market for life scientists won’t be improving anytime soon; mainly because it is more cost effective for companies to perform R&D and clinical testing in the emerging markets of China, India, Brazil and Russia (BRIC).

The ability of life sciences companies to successfully perform these activities outside of the US is in large part due to the lack of interest by American students in science careers and misguided immigration policies that prevented talented US-trained foreign nationals from remaining in the US after completing their training. This allowed many foreign countries to achieve a critical mass of US-trained life scientists and provide Western life sciences companies with a highly trained and well equipped scientific workforce.

With the holidays approaching, now may be a good time for those of you who work or considering careers in the life sciences industry to re-evaluate or consider alternate career options for life scientists.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

 

Despite Assertions to the Contrary Novartis Lays Off 1,400 Sales Reps

Despite public assertions made by Novartis a mere eight days ago that it would not be eliminating thousands of jobs, the company today announced that it was eliminating 1,400 sales reps. Roughly 1,150 jobs will be cut from its primary care division—which is being consolidated into three units from four in the US—and another 250 from psychiatric and neuroscience. No jobs will be eliminated from Novartis’ headquarters in Hanover, NJ. While the job cuts announced today were not in the thousands (almost) it isn’t clear whether or not more are to come.

According to a post on today’s Pharmalot blog:

"Novartis had attempted to dampen speculation that a huge bloodletting was imminent after Roche disclosed plans to axe 4,800 jobs worldwide (back story) and, in fact, Joe Jiminez, the CEO, had written on his internal blog that news reports about big layoffs were inaccurate. Technically, the Novartis reduction is not in the thousands, but the number is still large and, essentially, confirms concerns that have been expressed over the past month at CafePharma, the online forum where reps dish the dirt (look here)."

Don’t you just love the holidays?

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

 

Big Pharma Continues to Shed Large Numbers of Jobs

While a report released today indicated that the pharmaceutical market is expected to grow to about $800 billion by 2011—a 5 to 7 percent increase—pharmaceutical companies shed another 6,069 jobs in September according to the outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This is compared to only 200 pharmaceutical employees who were given pink slips in August. Despite a lull this summer, it appears that pharma companies are ramping up again to layoff large numbers of employees by year’s end.

Previously, industry analysts were predicting that job losses in the pharmaceutical sector would be less than last year when 58,583 employees were shown the door. However, at the current pace—43,334 jobs lost so far—the total number of pharma jobs lost in 2010 may match or surpass the losses in 2009. This is because pharma budgets for the upcoming fiscal year are prepared in the fall and the real bottom lines are not known until the holiday season is upon us. Consequently, pharma has a nasty habit of announcing layoffs during the holiday season (nice huh?)

To date, Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Lundbeck, Lonza, and Johnson & Johnson have all announced plans to reorganize and downsize. It is anyone’s guess which companies may follow suit.

Unfortunately, it is tough to be in the life sciences business these days; unless of course you live in China, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America! Alternatively, it may not be a bad idea to relocate!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Abbott to Shed 3,000 Jobs

The Pharmalot Blog today reported that Abbott will be cutting about 3,000 jobs. The downsizing comes about a year after Abbott purchased Solvay Pharmaceuticals for about 6.2 billion but failed last month to find a buyer for the Solvay vaccine unit (which was expected to fetch about $600 million). 

According to the post, most of the jobs will be eliminated in R&D, manufacturing and commercial operations mainly at former Solvay Pharmaceutical sites in the Netherlands and Germany. Also, Solvay’s current US headquarters in Marietta Georgia will be closed in the near future.

Abbott has approximately 90,000 employees worldwide. While the recession may be officially over the job cuts continue and unemployment continues to rise.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

 

Sanofi Aventis to Reduce Sales and Marketing Workforce to Cut Costs

The expanding European financial crisis is forcing drug makers to continue to explore ways in which to cut costs. Faced with budget deficits amid a global economic crisis, European countries such as Germany, France and Greece have cut or plan to cut their health-care spending. Greece last month ordered drugmakers, including France’s largest drug maker Sanofi-Aventis, to cut prices by 3 percent to 27 percent to help rescue its economy. 

Not surprisingly, Sanofi Aventis responded by announcing new job cuts and more stringent cost control measures. Yesterday, Sanofi’s Chief Financial Officer announced at an analyst meeting in Los Angeles that “We are restructuring. We are changing our marketing model. We are merging sales forces, we are reducing sales forces, having a multiproduct sales force. We will continue to do that.” Most of the job cuts and cost saving measures will come at the expense of sales and marketing personnel. The size of pharmaceutical R&D and sales and marketing workforces have been devastated over the past three years with over 200,000 employees losing their jobs.

Sanofi-Aventis Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher, who joined the company in 2008, shut or sold plants and canceled the least promising research projects in a bid to trim 2 billion euros ($2.46 billion) in costs. These actions, coupled with the most recent restructuring efforts were enacted to ensure 2013 earnings are at least equal to 2008 profit. Like most other big pharma companies, Sanofi has been looking to emerging markets and consumer products for new income as competition from generic drugs hurts sales. The anti-clotting drug Plavix which is Sanofi’s largest selling drug generating over $4.0 billion annually will lose patent protection in 2011-2012. Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi’s marketing partner for Plavix in the US, also exceeded $4.0 billion in sales last year.

Sanofi also announced today that it acquired the assets of Montreal-based Canderm Pharma, Inc a consumer products company for $1.9 billion signaling its intention to aggressively enter the North American consumer healthcare products markets.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

 

Job Cut Update: GlaxoSmithKline Mum on Number of US Jobs that will be Lost

Despite the announcement late last week in the London Sunday Times that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will eliminate 4000 jobs worldwide, company official are refusing to disclose the number of worker who will lose their jobs in the US. Cuts are expected throughout the US including GSK’s R&D facilities in the Philadelphia, PA area and at its US headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC which employs roughly 5,000 people.

GSK officials typically refuse to share detailed information on how layoffs affect its Triangle work force. Nearly a year ago, the company cut an undisclosed number of workers at a customer response center in RTP. GSK announced a first cost-cutting initiative in October 2007, eliminating thousands of jobs worldwide, and then it expanded that effort in February 2009 with many hundreds losing jobs at it North Carolina facilities in RTP and nearby Zebulon.

This coming Thursday is expected to be pink slip day at GSK.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (forget RTP)!!!!!!!

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Is the Economy Really Improving? Astra Zeneca to Cut 8,000 Jobs

AstraZeneca PLC said today it , or 12 percent of its work force, by 2014 to cut costs as it reported disappointing fourth quarter earnings. The job cuts will be made across all regions and divisions and were necessary because some of the company’s major products including the child asthma medication Pulmicort, which made sales of $1.3 billion in 2009, and breast cancer treatment Arimidex, with $1.92 billion in sales will be losing patent protection in the near future.

CEO David Brennan said the company was extending a cost-cutting program it launched in 2007, which had saved the company $1.6 billion annually at the end of 2009.Extending the program out to 2014 will cost another $2 billion, with expected benefits of $1.9 billion a year by 2014, he said.

Around 12,600 jobs having already been eliminated under the program, although Brennan suggested that the net figure was closer to 4,600 after new roles were created by the company, which employs around 63,000 people worldwide.

The new round of cuts will be global, including sales and marketing, business infrastructure, research and development and the supply chain. The company’s research & development division will lose about 1,800 jobs and according to Brennan there may be some closures of research and development sites or facilities as part of the restructuring. The company is reported to be waiting for regulatory approval of five new products.

Despite claims that the US economy is improving, big pharma continues to downsize its R&D workforce. Call me crazy, but aren’t these the same companies that argue that healthcare reform will stifle innovation and hinder new drug discovery? This begs the question: how do you discover new and novel medicines and treatments if the people who discover and develop drugs no longer work at your company? There is always outsourcing and M&A I suppose.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

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Expect More Uneasiness at Pharma Companies This Week

In the wake of last week’s Pfizer-Wyeth M&A feeding frenzy, I suspect that most analysts were hoping that this week would be a little quieter. Unfortunately for many pharmaceutical company employees, this week may be shaping up to be almost as nerve-wracking as last week!and declared that it was on the hunt for a merger or acquisition partner. A ll of the usual suspects have been cited as possibilities. They include: Bristol Myers Squibb (Plavix, Erbitux, Orencia Abilify) , Amgen (EPO, Aranesp, Neupogen, Neulasta and Enbrel), Biogen-Idec (Avonex, Tsyabri and Rituxan) (Actavis (generics) Ratiopharm (generics) and Crucell (vaccines). The hands on favorite and most likely target would be Bristol Myers Squibb because the two companies co-market Plavix, their top selling drug that is due to lose patent protection in the next year or so. That said, in this environment anything can happen. 

 

In other news, GlaxoSmithKline announced that it will be cutting 6,000 jobs later this week when the company puts out financial results. The company began reorganizing itself in 2007 and will continue to do over the next few years to deal with generic encroachment on several of its top selling drugs. Glaxo employs about 100,000 people worldwide. Analysts suspect that many of the job cuts will occur in the UK and that sales rep may be hit the hardest in this latest round of layoffs.

Until next time…

 Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!