The pharmaceutical industry is recruiting with all its might

In 2022, hiring in the pharmaceutical industry has accelerated at a pace not seen since the mid-2000s.

Nearly 3,000 additional jobs were created in the pharmaceutical industry between 2021 and 2022, including fixed-term and permanent contracts. Fourth consecutive year of growth in recruitment at a level higher than the rest of French industry. Data communicated by LEEM, the French pharmaceutical industry union, show that these hires mainly concern qualified jobs, i.e. a level of education above Bac +2.

Awareness during the pandemic

All sizes of companies are concerned, from SMEs to large laboratories. The pharmaceutical sector today represents a little more than 3% of industrial employment in France, with 106,000 employees. In total, nearly seven out of 10 companies saw their workforce increase, or at least remain stable, last year.

Obviously, the Covid crisis has been there, as well as the desire to reindustrialize our territories and ramp up our production tools. The first weeks of the pandemic highlighted the lack of medicines and showed the scale of the problem. Our industry was no longer capable of supplying the country to meet its needs. The massive hiring we are talking about today is the result of this awareness.

Reindustrialization

In November, there was the announcement of an investment of two billion euros to strengthen production at the Danish Novo Nordisk factory in Chartres, in Eure-et-Loir. The subcontractor Unither is building a new vaccine manufacturing line in Amiens, in Hauts-de-France. And Sanofi will launch in two years a new automated vaccine line in Neuville-sur-Saône, in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes… The list is not exhaustive.

France today has 270 drug production sites and although the sector is recruiting furiously, it remains faced with major skills problems. These difficulties particularly concern new digital professions for managing data, which are increasingly numerous, powerful and essential to the development of the sector.