While layoffs have slowed in the second half of the year, according to BioSpace data, companies including Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson are cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees in 2024.
Biotech and pharma layoffs continued at companies of all sizes in 2024 but slowed in the second half of the year, according to BioSpace tallies. Just before the halfway point, more than 14,000 positions had been cut. Had that pace continued, there’d be roughly 28,000 layoffs in 2024. However, just over midway through December, the year-to-date number is about 24,000.
News of the slowdown did not surprise Eric Celidonio, founder and managing partner of Sci.bio Recruiting, a biopharma recruiting firm. He told BioSpace his firm has been busier post-September than it had been for a while.
As to what this year’s layoffs say about biopharma, Celidonio doesn’t think they signal the industry is unhealthy and instead represent “real-time natural selection.”
“When there’s less capital to go around, inevitably, the consequences are that some companies will go extinct, and they should,” he said. “They’re just less efficient, they’re less capable, they’ve made mistakes, whatever the case is.”
This year’s cuts include workforce reductions at large pharmas, which Celidonio attributed largely to M&A activities.
“They’ve been buying companies in the therapeutic areas or the technologies they want to grow into rather than try and build them on their own,” he said.
Once acquisitions are done, Celidonio explained, large pharmas don’t need as many employees—layoffs are just part of the process.
Despite the continued workforce cuts, there have been encouraging signs for the industry this year. For example, PitchBook’s Q2 biopharma report showed that in the second quarter, venture capital funding hit its highest quarterly level since 2022. On a state level, Massachusetts in November approved a $500 million capital reauthorization of its life sciences initiative over 10 years. That investment includes increasing an annual life sciences tax incentive program from $30 million to $40 million.
When looking at 2024’s layoffs, it’s important to note that not all are announced publicly by a company or through a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. To tally workforce reductions, BioSpace compiled data for known cuts in its layoff tracker and estimated the number of those affected based on information in company press releases, WARN notices, SEC filings, other media outlets’ reports and confirmation from company officials. Based on those estimations, here are the five biopharma companies that have laid off the most employees so far in 2024.
1. Johnson & Johnson
While Johnson & Johnson topped the list, that’s because its estimated layoffs of nearly 2,300 employees include cutting up to 2,000 people in China, a move that largely affects a surgical products division. If the exact number of those cuts was known, J&J might rank lower.
BNN Bloomberg reported the workforce reduction in China in November, noting that according to Chinese media outlets, it will impact up to a fifth of the pharma’s mainland workforce. J&J employs about 10,000 people in China. The layoffs are due to growing competition from domestic rivals resulting from Beijing’s campaign to drive down medical costs, according to BNN Bloomberg.
Additional J&J staff cuts include letting go 231 employees at the pharma’s New Brunswick, New Jersey, headquarters, effective Dec. 27. A company spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in an emailed statement that to continue meeting patient needs worldwide, the organization must adapt and evolve “in the midst of a complex and rapidly changing environment.”
In February, Fierce Biotech reported J&J would let go 55 employees by April 26 as part of its closure of a nearly 200,000-square-foot research and development outpost in Brisbane, California.
2. Bristol Myers Squibb
Bristol Myers Squibb grabbed headlines in April when it announced it would eliminate 2,200 jobs by the end of 2024 in an effort to generate about $1.5 billion in cost savings. The company hopes to optimize operations by reducing management layers, among other cost-cutting measures, according to its investor presentation. BMS also noted it would prioritize developing key growth brands and minimizing third-party expenditures.
Multiple waves of WARN notices followed, with workforce reductions mainly affecting employees at the company’s Lawrenceville, New Jersey, headquarters. Some of those cuts are effective this year and others in 2025. Lawrenceville’s reported layoffs total nearly 1,330 so far. In May alone, Massachusetts WARN notices detailed BMS’ plans to let go 863 employees at HQ.
The company also laid off 252 workers at its former Mirati Therapeutics headquarters in San Diego in April. BMS had completed its $4.8 billion acquisition of Mirati Jan. 23.
The pharma’s cost cuts seem to be working. In Q2 and Q3, BMS beat analyst expectations, and it’s consistently raised its full-year earnings guidance.
3. Bayer
In May, just weeks after BMS announced it’s cutting 2,200 employees this year, Bayer shared its own significant layoff news: It had reduced its headcount by approximately 1,500 jobs. Most of the affected roles were management positions in the company’s pharmaceuticals, crop science and consumer health divisions.
During a media call at the time, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said the layoffs would help the pharma hit its target of “€500 million ($540 million) of sustainable cost savings in 2024 and €2 billion ($2.16 billion) in 2026.”
To date, the company has let go about 1,900 employees total, including nearly half of its executive team in March as part of a new operating model intended to reduce bureaucracy and hierarchies. The staff reductions also include over 200 people at Bayer’s U.S. headquarters in Whippany, New Jersey, this year.
The company is also trimming staff overseas. In August, Fierce Pharma reported the pharma will cut about 150 jobs at its consumer health international headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, effective by 2025.
4. Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Takeda Pharmaceuticals is letting go nearly 1,500 employees total in the U.S. and Austria in 2024 and early 2025. Staff reductions began early this year. In March, Endpoints News reported the company would close R&D and manufacturing operations at a facility in Orth an der Donau, Austria, eliminating 190 jobs.
In May, news hit that Takeda would let go nearly 1,000 employees in San Diego and Massachusetts combined. The company in July closed an R&D hub in San Diego that employed 324 people, although the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that some of those affected would get job offers at the pharma’s Massachusetts offices. In Massachusetts, 495 people in Cambridge and 146 in Lexington are being laid off between July 2024 and March 2025.
The cuts announced in May came at about the same time Takeda reported a 57% drop in profit for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024; a forecasted profit hit for the coming year tied to continued sales erosion of Vyvanse, its ADHD therapy; and an “enterprise-wide efficiency program” that would cost about $900 million.
5. Pfizer
Pfizer’s estimated layoffs could total about 1,300 employees and include cuts tied to a “cost-realignment” program launched in October 2023. That program was designed to generate $3.5 billion in savings through 2024, helping to offset a steep decline in the company’s COVID-19 product sales.
This year’s staff reductions affect employees in the United States and Ireland. The largest known layoffs were in February, hitting 285 people at the pharma’s vaccine R&D site in Pearl River, New York. In May, Pfizer ended research operations at its Boulder, Colorado, facility where at one point, there were almost 300 people, Endpoints News reported. The pharma did not specify how many employees the Boulder layoffs affected.
Pfizer also in May disclosed plans to save $1.5 billion over the next several years, noting it expected to incur $1.7 billion in one-time costs, in part due to severance pay. Layoffs continued after the announcement, including 150 employees being let go at the company’s Sanford, North Carolina, facility in July. Overseas, up to 210 manufacturing jobs are being eliminated this year and next year in Ireland, The Irish Times reported in October.
Looking Ahead: Industry and Job Growth—and Trump
Looking ahead to 2025, Celidonio thinks the industry will grow, albeit slowly. He also expects to see job growth in the coming years. As to how President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will affect biopharma, Celidonio said it will be a mixed bag.
He noted that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to head up the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has made it clear he’s not particularly vaccine friendly. On the other hand, Celidonio said, Marty Makary, Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner, is meant to be a bureaucracy cutter. Therefore, drugs could move more quickly and efficiently through the clinical trial process, with experimental therapies getting faster nods for new indications.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a net negative,” Celidonio said of the new administration. “I don’t think Trump wants to make an enemy of pharma.”
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