Job Trends
BioSpace data show job postings live increased quarter over quarter, while layoffs fell year over year.
Labor Market Reports
BioSpace’s 2026 U.S. Life Sciences Employment Outlook examines the state of the biopharma workforce amid ongoing funding pressure, elevated layoffs and cautious hiring sentiment, while highlighting early signals of stabilization and cautious optimism for the year ahead.
BioSpace’s 2025 Q4 U.S. Life Sciences Job Market update highlights early signs of stabilization in biopharma hiring, with modest gains in job postings, slowing layoffs, and cautiously improving sentiment heading into 2026.
BioSpace’s Q3 2025 U.S. Life Sciences Job Market Report reveals a turbulent quarter for biopharma hiring, with record declines in job postings, rising layoffs, and cautious employer sentiment shaping the industry’s employment landscape.
Now Hiring
Looking for an IT job? From data engineer to information security, check out the BioSpace list of 10 companies hiring life sciences professionals like you.
More biopharma organizations were actively recruiting at the end of 2025 than 2024, based on the new BioSpace employment outlook report. Areas in demand this year include research and development and clinical. Organizations are also prioritizing artificial intelligence hires.
Looking for a research and development job? Check out the BioSpace list of 12 companies hiring life sciences professionals like you.
Career Advice
If workloads aren’t adjusted as needed, the company’s priorities are already compromised. Executive coach Angela Justice explores what happens when goals move forward without removing unnecessary work and what to do about it.
THE LATEST
ImmunityBio will lay off 15 employees in California, mostly in El Segundo, effective Nov. 25. The company is also letting go 16 employees later this month.
Big Pharma companies Bayer and Johnson & Johnson are downsizing their New Jersey workforces while Pfizer cuts jobs in Ireland. Many of the layoffs are effective by the end of the year.
Designed to create hundreds of jobs and add up to $1 billion to Massachusetts’ gross domestic product by the start of 2030, MassBio’s five-year strategic plan addresses challenges including skill gaps and talent shortages.
As it shifts focus to a death receptor 3 (DR3) antagonist antibody, Shattuck Labs is cutting a significant number of employees before the end of the year.
About a month after reporting it’s had a tough time starting enough patients on its treatments, bluebird bio announced it will lay off about 25% of its employees, over half of whom work in R&D.
Athira Pharma will cut about 49 positions, including two people in the C-suite. The announcement follows the company’s disappointing results for its investigational Alzheimer’s therapy.
Bristol Myers Squibb is continuing its cost-savings measures with layoffs in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The company announced earlier this year that it will eliminate 2,200 jobs by the end of 2024 in a bid to save $1.5 billion through 2025.
Oncternal Therapeutics will lay off about 10 workers as it explores “strategic alternatives” that could include asset sales or an M&A.
For the first eight months of 2024, California had the most job postings live on BioSpace—37.7% more than Massachusetts. Last year, Massachusetts ranked No.1 for the same time period.
Astellas Pharma’s new life sciences center houses its first U.S.-based SakuLab, an incubator space for external partners, as well as its engineered small molecules unit.