Bristol Myers Squibb has made significant cuts to its workforce since last year as part of a strategic reorganization aimed at saving $3.5 billion through 2027. The latest cuts in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, bring that area’s total number of disclosed cuts this year to 806.
Bristol Myers Squibb is making yet more cuts to its Lawrenceville, New Jersey, workforce, this time axing 516 people, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. The layoffs will come in multiple waves starting May 9 and ending March 27, 2026.
BMS has its headquarters and a location housing its commercialization and late-stage development teams in Lawrenceville. It was not immediately clear if the cuts affect both sites, and the company did not provide a response to BioSpace’s question about that workforce reduction prior to publication of this article.
This is the third round of layoffs BMS has disclosed for Lawrenceville in 2025, bringing that area’s total number of affected employees this year to 806.
The pharma has made significant cuts to its workforce recently. In April 2024, the company announced it would eliminate about 2,200 jobs by the end of last year as part of an effort to save approximately $1.5 billion through 2025. In February, BMS announced that the strategic reorganization would go even deeper, with an additional $2 billion in savings through 2027. Those savings will come from organizational design changes and enhanced operational efficiency, according to a fourth quarter earnings release.
“With respect to the 2025 expansion, 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 company spokesperson told BioSpace via email.
So far this year, BMS has disclosed via WARN notices that it’s cutting 863 employees total, 93% of whom are in Lawrenceville.
- In early February, the company disclosed via WARN notice that it was cutting 67 people in that area starting in April and ending in December.
- In late February, BMS divulged in another WARN notice that it was cutting 223 employees in Lawrenceville starting in May and ending in August.
At the start of this month, Endpoints News reported that the pharma is closing a manufacturing facility in Libertyville, Illinois, that handles viral vector production. BMS purchased the site from Novartis in 2023, and the BMS spokesperson told BioSpace the company has now shifted its vector production work to a site in Devens, Massachusetts.
“Shifting these manufacturing operations to our Devens, MA facility offers an integrated approach that enhances efficiency and positions the company for long-term growth,” the spokesperson said.
The number of employees affected by the Libertyville closure is unknown.
In addition to the disclosed and reported cuts in New Jersey and Illinois, BMS laid off 57 employees from its Redwood City, California, facility effective in April, according to a WARN notice. That location is focused on the tumor microenvironment, according to the pharma’s website.
In other recent company news, BMS’ first-quarter sales took a year-over-year hit, declining 6% to $11.2 billion. The pharma attributed the decrease to the continued impact of generics and the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Part D redesign. BMS did, however, report a win for the quarter, with sales of its growth portfolio—which includes Opdivo and Cobenfy—increasing 16% year over year to $5.6 billion.
