The second quarter kicked off with Pfizer’s announcement of a $450-million expansion of its largest manufacturing facility, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The expansion is estimated to add approximately 450 new jobs to the area.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine co-developer, the German biotech company BioNTech, said in May that it would begin construction this year in Singapore on a manufacturing plant and Southeast Asia regional headquarters. The plant will produce a range of mRNA vaccines and therapeutics and is expected to be completed in 2023, bringing up to 80 jobs.

Singapore was also chosen as a vaccine production center by Sanofi. In a $474 million investment over five years, the French pharma will partner with the Singapore Economic Development Board on the facility, which will mainly supply the Asia region. The project will create up to 200 local jobs.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Bayer is planning to expand its footprint in Berkeley. The ambitious $1.2 billion, 30-year project includes almost a million square feet in new buildings and a doubling of current jobs to 2,000 employees by 2052. The company also said it would shutter its research hub near UCSF’s Mission Bay campus when its lease expires in October.

Finally, Amgen is set to spend $365 million on a new manufacturing plant near Columbus, Ohio. The 270,000 square feet facility will create 400 jobs and have automated features such as self-driving vehicles to move materials within the site and smart sensors to evaluate the products. Amgen will partner with the Ohio State University to create an internship and other education programs.

Advertised biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector jobs in the job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology grew in the second quarter of 2021 (Tables 1 and 2) as compared with the previous quarter (Nat. Biotechnol. 39, 643, 2021).

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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