In the second quarter of 2012, the number of advertised biotech and pharma sector jobs continued the steady increase seen in the first quarter of the year (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 467, 2012). Notable jumps in the number of listings were seen in at least one of the representative job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology (Tables 1 and 2) from Monsanto, Amgen, Life Technologies, Shire, Illumina, Dendreon, Pfizer, Roche, AstraZeneca and Merck.

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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Notable expansions during the quarter include Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma opening its $150-million North American headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois, in June. The campus holds about 1,100 employees. In addition, in April, Life Technologies unveiled a planned $18.5-million expansion of its 20-year-old manufacturing facilities at Inchinnan, UK, creating 20 to 30 jobs initially with potential for further employment creation. The company employs more than 500 people at Inchinnan.

China continues to expand its life science footprint. Eli Lilly opened the Lilly China Research and Development Center in Shanghai to discover and develop diabetes treatments tailored specifically for Chinese patients, employing about 150 scientists and support staff hired primarily from China. Quintiles will open a 450-person regional headquarters in Shanghai in 2013. And Roche disclosed at a media event in Shanghai that it will invest $310.2 million over the next five years in China. Although no further details were disclosed, the news came shortly before the company announced the closing of its Nutley, New Jersey, facility along with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

Merck KGaA also announced the closure of biotech division Merck Serono's headquarters in Geneva as the first move of a cost-cutting program announced earlier this year. The plan will eliminate 500 employees and transfer 750 positions to Merck locations in Darmstadt, Germany; Boston; and Beijing. The company hopes to save $386.6 million by 2014 through the Merck Serono restructuring.

Other second-quarter downsizings within the life science industry are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings
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