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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Biotech Hiring Dependent on Location

05/04/2010
Jobs can be plentiful or scarce in the bio tech and life sciences sector depending on where companies are located.

According to an article at the Boston Business Journal, many big biotech companies in the Massachusetts area are hiring hundreds of workers to propel new products and operate new facilities in an effort to regain ground lost in the past two years. Many are also looking to rely more on outsourced services providers, which in turn, are also looking to bring on more staff.

For example two Massachusetts-based life sciences groups have busy HR departments these days. Shire has already hired 180 workers this year to support a new plant and product manufacturing and aims to hire on another 180 by year's end. Genzyme Corp. has over 680 jobs open at present, all tied to supporting a new $300 million plant.

The hiring will continue in the future as a new plant is also coming on line at year's end and a new drug is nearing regulatory approval.

But the biotech job front is a bit different on the other side of the country, according to California news reports. Hiring, for example, is slowing down at places located in the Bay Area. A recent job fair at a university campus only pulled in about half the bio tech companies it did last year.

The Bay Area biotech trade organization, BayBio, attributes the hiring slowdown to the recession and a series of mergers, sell-offs, and drug failures are to blame.

About 130,000 professionals work in biotech in Northern California and while employment has been growing at a rate of 2,000 each year, it's far from the pace of 6,000 new hires annually, according to BayBio.

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