Layoffs
In this bonus episode, BioSpace’s vice president of marketing Chantal Dresner and careers editor Angela Gabriel take a look at Q1 job market performance, layoffs and administration decisions impacting the workforce.
2024 was a tough year for the biopharma industry, with several companies cutting hundreds or even thousands of employees. Follow along as BioSpace tracks job cuts and restructuring initiatives throughout 2025.
Health and Human Services employees aren’t the only ones out of work. Thousands of private-sector biopharma professionals lost their jobs in the first quarter.
The number of employees laid off dropped year over year during the first quarter. BioSpace recaps the five largest layoffs, which included BMS and Novartis cuts.
After moving the manufacturing of a CAR T drug that was part of its ImmPACT Bio acquisition to Washington, Lyell Immunopharma is closing its Los Angeles manufacturing facility, eliminating dozens of jobs there.
Roche’s reorganization of Spark Therapeutics is coming more into focus, with nearly 300 employees being let go by the end of this year. Spark also trimmed its staff in 2024.
Although U.S. full-time employees worked an average of 42.9 hours weekly last year, according to Gallup, that wasn’t true for most BioSpace LinkedIn poll respondents. A Karius HR executive discusses a few potential reasons for the longer workweeks.
Following the dramatic late-night resignation of Peter Marks last Friday, Steele, a senior advisor to the division, takes the reins in a department inside an agency beset by cuts, layoffs, and confusion.
Biopharma leaders react to the forced resignation of CBER Head Peter Marks as RFK Jr.’s promised job cuts begin at the FDA; Novo Nordisk presents mixed results from oral semaglutide in cardiovascular disease; the EU’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use declines to recommend Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug; and pharma R&D returns grew in 2024.
Organon’s workforce cuts come several months after the company’s loss of exclusivity to its second-largest product, Atozet.
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