The year 2011 started with cautious optimism 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 fourth quarter of 2010 (Nat. Biotechnol. 29, 169, 2011) \, there was a slight increase in the number of companies advertising more jobs. Vertex (Cambridge, MA, USA) heads the list of big hirers, adding over 200 employees to support the planned US launch of telaprevir this year. The company expects to hire an additional 150 employees.

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies
Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies

Notable new job listings include several senior scientist positions in China for both GlaxoSmithKline (London) and AstraZeneca (London) at its AstraZeneca Innovation Center (Shanghai). Illumina (San Diego) posted 19 new openings at its San Diego and Cambridge, UK, locations. And the newly opened Celgene Institute of Translational Research Europe (Seville, Spain) is also hiring, with four openings in the Naturejobs database.

On the downside, Novartis (Basel) has proposed closing pharmaceutical operations and partially closing its global development site in Horsham, UK, as part of its previously announced worldwide restructuring. In addition, Pfizer (New York) said it will significantly decrease R&D spending and cut its global workforce by as much as 5%. The company plans to close its Sandwich, UK, site and reduce and shift resources at its Groton, Connecticut site.

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

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings