Over the last year employers have done away with approximately 25,500 New Jersey jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This net loss caused the state to be number 5 on this list of states that lost the most jobs during the course of the last 12 months. Florida, where 106,100 jobs fell victim to the ax, lost the most positions in the nation. California, which lost 58,900 jobs, followed. The other to states to make the top five for jobs lost were Michigan, with a loss of 53,600, and Arizona, where employers did away with 33,000 positions.
These recent statistics make the impending loss of more than 800 jobs in New Jersey seem like part of a negative pattern. Recently several pharmaceutical companies have notified the state that they will either be doing away with or relocating at least this many jobs in the coming months. Employer Schering-Plough will be doing the most significant of these job cuts, according to spokesperson Stephen Galpin.
The company, which has decided to decrease its global staff by 5,500 workers, will be getting rid of a minimum of 500 jobs in NJ alone. Schering-Plough has found the jobs cuts necessary due, at least in part, to the declining sales of its cholesterol drug franchise. Gaplin says that the greatest number of concentrated layoffs will be occurring in New Jersey.
Another chunk of the job cuts will occur at Johnson & Johnson. The company is merging its Ortho Biotech operations with its subsidiary Centocor. This action will require that 260 jobs currently located in Bridgewater be moved to Centocor’s headquarters in Horsham, Pa, says spokesperson Chris Molieneaux.
On top of this, Ortho Biotech recently notified the state that it will be laying off 22 employees as part of the 289 jobs nationwide that it will be doing away with. This is a drastic decrease from the what the company originally planned. When first announced, Ortho Biotech said that it would be cutting 400 jobs nationwide, 150 of which were expected to occur in New Jersey. Johnson and Johnson has decided to merge Ortho Biotech with Centocor due to troublesome sales of the company’s anemia drug Procrit.
Abbott Laboratories also recently filed notice with the state that it will be closing the doors to its Parsippany drug development operation. As part of the closure, 83 jobs will be relocated to the company’s research headquarters located in Abbott Park, Illinois on August 29th. In a recent e-mail spokesperson Kelly Morrison wrote that “Abbott has offered positions in Illinois to a number of Parsippany employees, and will work with its employees to determine if transfers to other Abbott locations are possible.”
