U.S. R&D headcount tumbles in key categories

Pharmalot has been crunching the numbers for R&D jobs and concludes that the U.S. is seeing a considerable amount of shrinkage in the field. Looking at new numbers from PhRMA for 2006, R&D employment among its members dropped 3.9 percent. And there were a number of sizable reductions last year, with the axe expected to drop again over the course of 2008.

RPM concludes that the biggest cutbacks in R&D are occurring in the approval and post-marketing phases. The money spent on R&D in the U.S. continues to rise, but after an 11.3 percent hike in 2006 budgets rose only 2.7 percent to a still considerable $35.4 billion.

- read the report from Pharmalot
- see the PhRMA report (.pdf)

Related Articles:
Top 8 layoffs of 2007
The Top 15 R&D Budgets
Big Pharma's biotech shift means layoffs for chemists
Ranks of sales reps thinning