64% of Biopharma Workers Say They've Been Laid Off in Five Years

Sixty-four percent of biopharma professionals have been laid off at least once in the past five years, and 22% — just over one in five — have lost their jobs two or more times, according to a BioSpace LinkedIn poll. Those numbers frame a labor market shaped by funding troubles, patent expirations and tariff threats, and they explain why so many readers' resumes now carry gaps.

What does a second layoff change for a career?

Several respondents to a BioSpace survey, all laid off twice within five years, described the damage in concrete terms. One said their career has effectively stopped: they held a senior role, cannot find full-time work and have turned to part-time consulting. Another said repeated restructurings disrupted their professional trajectory, creating uncertainty and making career continuity and long-term growth harder to maintain despite their experience and contributions.

A third put it bluntly: "Many recruiters and hiring managers don't want to bother with someone frequently let go." Getting past HR screening and being taken seriously by the hiring manager, they wrote, is harder after multiple separations.

Not every outcome is negative. One respondent said being let go twice gave them the push to start two small businesses. Participants in a BioSpace survey last year reported similar stories of becoming their own bosses after layoffs.

How much do multiple layoffs hurt hiring chances?

Bryan Blair, vice president of biotech and pharma recruiting at GQR Global Markets, told BioSpace that when candidates are otherwise equal, his clients almost always choose the person who has never been let go. Layoffs are generally viewed as a blemish on a resume, he said, and rank among the most common reasons candidates are rejected. Multiple layoffs, he added, can affect someone's chances "in an astronomical way."

His explanation is managerial, not moral. "If we all put ourselves in the shoes of a hiring manager, you're going to be responsible for this person that you're bringing in," Blair said. Approval becomes far easier, he explained, when the resume shows a linear progression through job titles with no employment gaps.

That bias has produced a quiet workaround. Some biopharma professionals, especially first-time layoff victims, list their most recent role as running to "present" rather than noting an end date. Blair estimated the practice has increased roughly fivefold over the past five years.

"The gamble pays off for them on most occasions," he said. "It really kind of makes you think: Is the current way we evaluate these things super fair, because when somebody is doing something deceptive like that, it can work to their advantage."

What should candidates say in interviews?

Blair's advice for candidates who reach the interview stage after multiple layoffs: do not raise the losses unprompted, but be ready to discuss them if asked. If the layoff was part of a large, publicly reported workforce reduction, candidates should state its scope explicitly — "It makes it clear that it has nothing to do with your performance," he said.

Without public coverage, the situation gets trickier: a hiring manager may suspect a firing disguised as a layoff. Blair advised candidates to explain the specifics, for example that the employer eliminated an entire pharmacovigilance department after a drug failed a clinical trial. Then, he said, frame the layoff as a learning experience — what it taught them, and how it showed them not to take jobs for granted. "When you can bring those elements in and show that it was a positive for you, that's going to be your best chance," Blair said.

As restructuring continues across biopharma, the candidates most likely to get hired may be those who can document the scope of each cut and turn the gap into a story of adaptation.