French multinational "big pharma" firm Sanofi-Aventis announced yesterday that it would trim 1,700 jobs from its United States workforce. About 300 will be dropped from Sanofi's North American headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Bridgewater is no backwater in the pharma world. Multinational pharmaceuticals and satellite firms are clustered near one another in central New Jersey, including Bridgewater. The firms want this arrangement, as it's easier to attract and keep its high-priced scientific talent, poach others from their competitors, and leverage the advantage of the region's roughly equidistant geographic position between New York and Philadelphia.
When the desirability of economic globalization gained traction some years ago, its advocates strongly asserted that the phenomenon would help the United States prosper. In particular, globalization's supporters (stand up, Clinton Democrats) pointed to "high-value" jobs in fields such as pharma as a strong reason to accept the "good" of globalization with the "bad". What a difference a few years make! Now, multinationals such as Sanofi-Aventis focus their efforts and their personnel in "high growth," cheaper labor regions of the globe, such as Asia south of China. The United States is not projected to experience either exciting growth or significantly cheaper labor costs for scientific talent.
Of course, if the Great Recession were truly finis, Sanofi's workforce trim would have been far less likely. The French firm has manifestly demonstrated, in deeds and not words, that the Great Recession has modified its economic expectations for America. Given the Gallic vote of little confidence in the USA's financial future, do you think those Sanofi jobs will return? Or that Apple, Amazon, and Google can single-handedly lift the American economy into a better place than it currently finds itself? Where will the money come from?
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