The third quarter of 2012 saw the number of advertised biotech and pharma sector jobs remain stable from the previous quarter (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 803, 2012). On the representative job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology, the number of total listings for the largest companies increased on Monster but declined on LinkedIn. Company-wise, CSL, bioMérieux, PerkinElmer, IDEXX Laboratories, Celgene, Johnson & Johnson and Roche substantially increased their numbers of open positions on at least one job board, whereas Monsanto, Amgen, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Biotest, Dendreon, Bayer, GSK, Pfizer and Merck experienced hiring slowdowns (Tables 1 and 2).

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

Notable expansions during the quarter include New Brunswick, New Jersey–based Johnson & Johnson, which plans to establish four regional centers to identify and accelerate development of early-stage life science innovations. The centers will be located in California (with campuses in San Diego and San Francisco), Boston, London and an as-yet-undetermined location in China. Morphotek, a subsidiary of Eisai, will open an $80-million, 60,000-square-foot biologics manufacturing facility in Exton, Pennsylvania. Covidien opened an R&D facility in Shanghai, housing 17 laboratories and surgical suites and employing over 300 people. Finally, Amarillo Biosciences plans to open an operations center in Taipei, Taiwan, to explore new business opportunities in Asia.

AstraZeneca announced that its subsidiary MedImmune will close two of its infectious disease and vaccine R&D sites in Mountain View and Santa Clara, California, as part of the pharma company's broader restructuring program announced in the first quarter of 2012. The closures will reduce headcount by 200 and relocate an additional 100 positions to MedImmune's other facilities. Additionally, Boehringer Ingelheim said it will discontinue its virology research program, resulting in the loss of about 170 employees, due to the closure of a Laval, Quebec, research facility in early next year.

Other third-quarter downsizings of note within the life science industry are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings
Full size table