The Top 10 Pharma Layoffs of 2012

By the beginning of 2012, the pharma industry had endured one of the biggest shakeouts in the industry’s history. Tens of thousands of jobs had been eliminated, and most employees had good reason to fear they would be next. Just after the New Year, PharmaIQ reported that a survey revealed that 44% of the people they contacted were afraid of losing their jobs.

Over the course of the year there has been plenty of industry news about notable layoffs, but it’s also important to note that the trend is on the wane. By the latter part of the last decade, the stats gathered by Challenger, Gray & Christmas reflected about 45,000 job cuts a year in pharma, with the trend peaking in 2010 with 53,636 announced layoffs. Last year the number dropped to a bit more than 21,000. And so far this year, it’s 10,109.

“It does seem like the big companies over the last few years have really been through a lot of downsizing,” says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “They may have been through the big bulk of their cuts. Most businesses are more in a slowly growing mode right now, not cutting back. We’ve seen more of the heavy layoffs already occur.”…

Top 10 Pharma Layoffs of 2012
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http://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-layoffs-2012