First quarter resurgence in biotech job postings

The first quarter of 2010 saw a resurgence of biotech and pharma postings on the three representative job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology (Tables 1 and 2). Most of the 10 largest biotech and 25 largest pharma companies saw an increase in listings compared with those in the fourth quarter of 2009 (Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 179, 2010), with three times as many biotechs listing more positions than those listing fewer. For pharmas, this ratio was 4:1.

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies

Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies

However, there was still some downsizing in the life science industry (Table 3). Nature Biotechnology will continue to follow hiring and firing trends throughout 2010.

Table 3 Selected biotech and pharma downsizings