Major pharmaceutical companies, with sales of at least $20 billion in 2025, cut a total of more than 22,000 jobs last year.
Of the 17 largest pharmaceutical companies analyzed in Fierce Pharma’s annual report review, only five recorded employee headcount growth in 2025*. In contrast, the direct impact of downsizing on efficiency was clear, with all but one company recording an increase in revenue per employee.
Big pharma is clearly entering a phase of scale adjustment. Going back to 2022, only three of the 17 companies we tracked recorded layoffs.
This reduction in headcount comes as the biopharmaceutical industry braces for a massive patent cliff of $300 billion in prescription drug revenue between 2025 and 2030. To maintain profits, many companies are resorting to cutting costs and cutting staff. This trend is likely to continue as several companies, including Pfizer and Merck, are in the midst of multi-year restructuring plans.
However, when viewed through a longer-term lens, the magnitude of these population reductions appears more modest. Despite recent divestitures and cost-cutting efforts, net headcount reductions across these 17 companies between 2021 and 2025 were approximately 12,000. This smaller decline can be attributed to significant headcount growth at GLP-1 heavyweights Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which added more than 36,000 jobs over the period to support their fast-growing diabetes and obesity franchises.
Compared to 2021, Novo Nordisk’s full-time employee count will increase by 43.9% to approximately 68,800 employees in 2025, and Lilly’s employee count will increase by 42.9% to approximately 50,000 employees.
Lilly is just one of three drug companies, along with AstraZeneca and Amgen, that have consistently increased their total workforce each year since 2021. But Lilly’s 2025 job growth of about 3,000 employees (6.4%) was overshadowed by Amgen’s 3,500 (12.5%) increase last year, the largest increase among its peers.
But while Amgen’s rapid headcount growth led to a 2% decline in sales per employee, making it the only company to show negative movement on this metric, Lilly’s growth told a different story. Driven by the impressive commercial success of its tirzepatide products Mounjaro and Zepbound, Lilly’s team expansion was accompanied by an impressive 36% increase in revenue per employee, the largest of any large pharmaceutical company in the group.
AstraZeneca has also maintained steady growth over the past five years, with headcount increasing from 83,100 in 2021 to 96,100 in 2025, including 1,800 new positions (1.9%) added last year.
As for Danish pharmaceutical company Novo, the company has been on an aggressive growth trajectory since 2021, with annual headcount additions consistently outpacing its peers, including Lilly. But that upward trajectory took a sudden turn last year. Amid disappointing GLP-1 sales and increased competition from both Lilly and compounders, Novo has gone from an industry-leading 20.4% team expansion in 2024 to a 9.8% headcount reduction in 2025, the steepest reduction of any company we evaluated.
The Danish drugmaker cut about 7,500 positions last year after adding about 13,000 full-time equivalent jobs in 2024, reaching about 76,300 at the end of the same year. The significant increase in 2024 also benefited from Novo’s acquisition of three Catalent locations, adding approximately 3,200 full-time and part-time employees to Novo’s total workforce.
Based on a standard deviation calculation relative to each company’s size, the dramatic growth and subsequent reductions made Novo the most volatile company in our group.
In contrast, Roche experienced the least changes in employee numbers from 2021 to 2025, with the most dramatic increase of 2.7% in 2022, followed by minor changes*. The Swiss drugmaker has overcome an initial loss-of-exclusivity phase in the late 2010s, when biosimilars of the once blockbuster oncology troika of Avastin, Herceptin and Rituxan emerged.
Industry-wide cost reductions
Novo also appeared to be adding new positions in the first few months of 2025 before unveiling a major restructuring under new CEO Mike Doosder in September. Under this initiative, the company aims to save around DKK 8 billion annually by the end of 2026 by laying off around 9,000 employees. The total number of positions announced at the time was approximately 78,400.
Several other large pharmaceutical companies have undertaken business overhauls over the past five years, some in response to changes in senior leadership and others directly related to expiring patents on top-selling products.
Bayer begins restructuring in 2024 under another new CEO initiative, as Bill Anderson streamlines the structure of the German conglomerate. By the end of 2025, Bayer had approximately 88,000 employees, compared to approximately 100,000 before the restructuring.
Takeda Pharmaceutical, under pressure from generic attacks on its attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug Vyvanse, has announced a company-wide restructuring in 2024. Japanese pharmaceutical companies are scheduled to announce full-year financial results for fiscal year 2025 in May, but as of the end of March 2025, the number of employees has already decreased by about 1,800 (3.7%), despite steadily increasing from the previous year.
Shortly after taking over as CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr. Chris Werner initiated a restructuring with a plan to cut costs by $1.5 billion by the end of 2025. This was extended last year, adding another $2 billion in cuts through the end of 2027. By the end of 2025, BMS has reduced approximately 1,600 positions (4.7%) compared to a year ago.
Similarly, in New Jersey, Merck & Co. unveiled sweeping cost-cutting efforts in July aimed at saving $3 billion a year by the end of 2027, when the company’s flagship asset, Keytruda, is expected to lose market exclusivity. The plan includes cutting approximately 6,000 employees.
Merck’s efforts don’t seem to have taken off in earnest last year, with the total number of employees at the end of 2025 remaining at about 75,000, the same as in 2024. The company was adding about 3,000 positions each year in 2024 and 2023.
Pfizer is another major pharmaceutical company that is cutting costs. In April 2025, the New York drugmaker raised its cost-cutting goal to $7.7 billion by 2027 in a reorganization first announced in 2023.
The $43 billion acquisition of Seagen boosted Pfizer’s workforce by 6% to about 88,000 in 2023, but the company cut its workforce by 7,000 (8%) in 2024 and 6,000 (7.4%) in 2025, to 75,000, the lowest in at least a decade.
Investment withdrawal contributes to reduction in number of employees
Pfizer’s headcount plummeted in 2020, the year the company spun off its established pharmaceutical business in Upjohn and merged with Mylan to form Viatris. This action reduced Pfizer’s workforce by 9,800 people, bringing the total number of employees to 78,500 at the time.
Similar divestitures occurred at Novartis, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, and Sanofi during the 2021-2025 period, all of which caused significant headcount reductions at pharmaceutical companies.
GSK’s merger with Hareon in 2022 resulted in approximately 20,700 (23%) job cuts. J&J added 11,000 people (7.8%) in 2022, but its headcount decreased by 20,800 (13.6%) following the spinoff of its Kenvue consumer health business. After spinning off generic drug division Sandoz in 2023, Novartis’ headcount decreased by approximately 25,600 people (25.2%).
For Sanofi, relinquishing control of its over-the-counter drug business Opera contributed to Sanofi’s largest staff reduction of more than 8,000 people (9.7%) among its 17-company group last year. The sale will increase the French pharmaceutical company’s revenue performance per employee by 21.8% in 2025, the third-largest annual increase after Lilly’s 36.2% and Novo’s 24.7%.
Novartis and Sanofi are the only two companies to cut jobs every year from 2021 to 2025. Before last year’s major opera-related layoffs, Sanofi had been cutting between 3,000 and 4,000 employees each year during this period.
At Novartis, Sandoz’s separation in 2022 coincided with major organizational changes. Excluding the Sandoz effect, Novartis’ continuing operations lost 3,620 (4.5%) positions in 2023 compared to 2022, followed by a further decrease of 0.2% in 2024 and 0.8% in 2025. Thanks to increased product sales and cost reductions, Novartis achieved its target of 40% core operating margin in 2025, two years ahead of schedule.
Despite sales growth and headcount reductions, non-U.S. drug companies generally generated less revenue per employee than their U.S. peers.
Among former U.S. companies, Novartis leads the pack in revenue per employee at about $753,000, followed by Swiss compatriot Roche at $717,000. Novo’s $679,000 ranked fourth behind Sanofi’s $704,000.
With revenue per employee of $1.73 million in 2025, Gilead Sciences remained the most productive large biopharmaceutical company during the period we studied. The interest rate was lower than the $1.95 million the California company posted in 2021, when it was receiving tailwinds from the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year, five companies, all based in the United States, had sales of more than $1 million per employee. BMS ranked second with $1.48 million, followed by Lilly with $1.3 million, Amgen with $1.17 million, and AbbVie taking the final result with $1.07 million.
Editor’s note: *Our analysis uses the number of employees listed in each company’s annual report. If both total employees and full-time equivalent (FTE) are reported, FTE is used. Roche changed its reporting method from FTE to headcount in 2025, but will use the same 2024 numbers because the company says its “underlying workforce remains largely unchanged.” Since Boehringer Ingelheim does not report full-year results, we also used the same 2024 numbers based on the company’s 2025 H1 report. Takeda’s numbers are one fiscal year behind. For example, 2025 employee numbers are for the 2024 fiscal year that ended in March 2025.
