Both BMS and Novo Nordisk have, in recent months, announced steep layoffs as they strive to cut back on costs.
The New Jersey biotech sector suffered a major blow on Wednesday with both Novo Nordisk and Bristol Myers Squibb announcing hundreds of layoffs, set to take place through the first quarter of next year.
According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification posting, BMS is letting go of 282 employees at its site in Lawrence Township, with effective dates in December 2025 and February and March of next year. Meanwhile, layoffs at Novo Nordisk will affect 263 employees at its Plainsboro location, all of whom will be let go within the year.
It’s been a difficult year for BMS’ presence in New Jersey. In February, the company, via two different WARN disclosures, revealed that it would lay off a total of 290 employees from its Lawrenceville campus. Then, in May, BMS added 516 more employees to the count in that area as it works to lessen its cash burn.
“We expect to realize approximately $2 billion in annual cost savings by the end of 2027, and we remain on track to deliver $1 billion of these savings by the end of this year,” a spokesperson for BMS told BioSpace at the time. The company again slimmed its Lawrenceville workforce in July with 68 terminations.
BMS is in the midst of an aggressive cost-cutting campaign. Last year, the pharma aimed to save $1.5 billion and met its target partly through sweeping layoffs. Some 2,200 people lost their jobs worldwide at BMS in 2024. In February this year, BMS raised its savings goal by $2 billion, which it expects to fulfill through 2027. Again, BMS expects layoffs to factor into this effort, saying at the time that its goal is to become a “leaner, more efficient company.”
Beyond New Jersey, BMS in April cut 57 employees from its Redwood City, California site and in May announced the closure of a cell therapy plant in Illinois.
In the same vein, Novo Nordisk revealed last week that it is downsizing its global headcount by 9,000 people, aiming to generate $1.25 billion in annualized savings through 2026. The layoffs correspond to 11% of the pharma’s workforce, most of whom are based in Denmark. These cuts will begin “immediately,” the Danish pharma said at the time, and will help it “simplify” its business and “improve the speed of decision-making.”
A BioSpace analysis following these layoffs showed that over the last five years, Novo’s employee count surged 81%, growing in step with its revenue. The pharma’s sales peaked at $13.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 before dropping to $12.1 billion in the second quarter of this year.
Correction (Sept. 19): This article was updated to correct the total number of employees that, in February, BMS revealed it would lay off to 290. BioSpace regrets the error.
