The fourth quarter of 2010 saw another hiring dip in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, as seen in the three representative job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology (Tables 1 and 2). Compared with the third quarter (Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 1218, 2010), large-cap companies advertising fewer job openings vastly outnumbered those with more positions to fill.

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies
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Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies
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Both Sanofi-aventis and Roche announced reductions as part of plans to streamline operations and reduce costs. Sanofi-aventis will cut 1,700 jobs or about 25% of its US pharmaceutical operations division, whereas Roche said it would restructure and reduce head count by 4,800 to about 77,200, with most of the cuts coming from sales, marketing and manufacturing. Roche also announced the discontinuation of several R&D programs, including RNAi research at sites in Europe and the US.

Among US biotechs, Biogen Idec and Genzyme announced head count reductions of 650 and 392, respectively. However, Bangalore, India–based Biocon announced plans to invest $161 million to establish a biomanufacturing and R&D facility at Bio-XCell, a biotech R&D park in Iskandar, Malaysia. The facility, expected to be operational by 2014, will focus on biosimilar and biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

Table 3 shows additional selected third quarter downsizings within the life science industry.

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings
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