The layoffs seen en masse in big pharma have been offset, in part, by a sharp rise in contract research employment – meaning job growth in the highly paid biosciences sector has remained generally steady among the nation’s many biotech clusters, according to a Battelle report released at the BIO International Conference.
The nonprofit’s report showed a 7.4 percent increase in biosciences employment between 2001 and 2012, growing by 111,000 jobs in that time frame to 1.6 million nationwide. However, there has been a 0.4 percent decrease in employment between 2007 and 2012, showing the industry – though buffered – wasn’t entirely recession-proof.
The report divvied “biosciences” into five sectors – agricultural feedstock and chemicals; drugs and pharmaceuticals; medical devices and equipment; research, testing and medical laboratories; and bioscience-related distribution.
This one is obvious: The drugs and pharmaceuticals sector has struggled of late, with steady job loss – between 2001 and 2012, it fell 7.1 percent. When sliced more finely, the percent loss is larger – between 2007 and 2012, employment in this sector fell 10.9 percent.
The decline is partially due, the report said, to the growing trend of drugmakers outsourcing research to CROs. Subsequently, research, testing and medical labs – described at BIO by Battelle Managing Director Mitch Horowitz as “really the up and coming sector” – grew a whopping 28.1 percent from 2001 – 2012.
Twenty-nine metro regions specialize in at least three of the above biotech sectors, with the obvious ones like Boston and the Bay Area complemented by more surprising clusters like Knoxville, Tenn. and Kalamazoo, Mich. Indianapolis was the only metropolitan area that had a specialized employment concentration in all five of these sectors in 2012.
The report also highlighted the premium salaries earned by bioscience workers – they receive wages 80 percent higher than other private sector employees. Drug and pharma employees make the most bank, with an average salary of $106,576 nationwide, though the average biosciences employee earned $88,202 in 2012. By contrast, the standard private sector employee made $49,130 that year.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The same old stressors have haunted the biosciences industry for several years, and continue to remain problematic: Federal funding continues to trend south, and concern remains whether biosciences companies can attract venture dollars to develop innovative products, Horowitz said.
The report is the sixth in a biennial series from Battelle and BIO. It tracks jobs in the bioscience industry state by state. Download the full report here and check out the assessment of each state here.
[Images from Battelle/BIO State Bioscience Jobs Report]
