What happened to 2024 Pharma R&D hiring? The slump began three months after the Federal Reserve initiated interest rate hikes in March of 2022 and persisted for over two years. The Biotech industry is very interest rate sensitive due to challenges in financing projects with lengthy timelines and significant hurdles to success. Employment grew only .2% for the two years after June 2022. This is in contrast to a 15.8% jump from mid-2020 to mid-2022. What can we expect for 2025 Pharma R&D hiring?
2025 Pharma R&D Hiring Demand is High
Low unemployment in the U.S., stalling working-age population growth and high demand for pharma R&D talent should equal a booming job market in 2025. Yet the scarcity of labor in the life science industry is limiting firm’s ability to hire. Academia has recognized this shortage with growth in new graduates with scientific and technical experience. The number of these degrees rose from 113K for 2011 graduates to 174K for 2022 graduates – a 54% increase.
The U.S. accounted for 47% of all new job postings in pharma R&D with the top five companies in the industry accounting for 36% of all hiring activity in 2024: Biocon, AZ, Merck, BMS and Hoffman-LaRoche. Established R&D clusters of Washington D.C./Baltimore, New York/New Jersey and Raleigh Durham led hiring with smaller hubs like Madison, WI, Trenton, NJ and Columbus, OH close behind.
There is typically a surge in hiring after Labor Day as managers look to fill positions before the budget cycle ends around Thanksgiving. Mass Bio plans to create hundreds more biopharma positions in Massachusetts by 2030, J&J plans to build a $2 billion biologics manufacturing plant in NC creating 420 new jobs and Lilly has made a $4.5 billion commitment to build a new facility in Indiana to house research and manufacturing functions employing 400 new engineers, scientists, lab technicians and operations personnel. All should have a positive impact on 2025 Pharma R&D hiring.
Women’s health looks to be a growth opportunity as more than 60% of women’s health-focused companies were founded in the six years leading up to 2022. In the past ten years there has been a 1,000% increase in the number of businesses in this space.
2025 Pharma R&D Hiring Trends
As it has in other industries, artificial intelligence is having an incredible impact on 2025 pharma R&D hiring. The pharma AI market’s compound annual growth rate is expected to be close to 30% every year from 2023 to 2032. Both AI and the pandemic accelerated a significant transformation in the pharma industry: a hybrid model that blends traditional in-person practices with innovative digital strategies.
Consumers are demanding, and getting, telemedicine and virtual consultations – 24% of patients are willing to switch doctors if virtual visit options are not offered. Text analytics like natural language processing is generating valuable info for medical practitioners and researchers from large volumes of unstructured data. The industry is becoming more responsive to market changes as real-time analytics is impacting decision making. Real World Evidence in clinical data obtained outside of traditional controlled trials is impacting decision making by doctors and drug development.
