Labour market information

Information on the need for skilled people is available from a number of sources.

Issues with recruiting people with the education and skills sought by the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry were researched by ABPI in 2005. The findings were published in a report Sustaining the Skills Pipeline in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry. The skills needs are being revisited in 2008 and the findings will be reported in October.

SEMTA, the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing carried out a Labour Market Survey of the Pharmaceutical and Bioscience sector in 2006. They collected data from 178 sites in the sector, employing nearly 27,500 people.

Key findings include:

• Overall the picture that emerges is of a sector that encompasses a wide range of companies in a number of distinct sub-sectors, from large multinational enterprises to micros with fewer than 10 employees. The sector is growing and has a high level of recruitment activity.
• New recruits in the last 12 months account for 11% of employees in the sample. 39% of sites are experiencing difficulty in filling vacancies for staff that cover a wide range of disciplines and functions. 22% of sites are finding vacancies hard to fill due to skills shortages in a range of both scientific and generic skills. The level of hard-to-fill vacancies and skills shortages is roughly five times higher than for all firms in England Source: National Employers’ Skills Survey 2006 (LSC).
• The consequences of vacancies that are hard-to-fill are serious. They include projects not being taken forward, the loss of products in the pipeline and having to turn away work.
• Women are well represented in the sector, although their proportion is smaller at senior levels. Despite a relatively young age profile, 17% of respondents report that there are current and/or anticipated problems filling vacancies for senior scientific staff as they retire.
• Between them, the 178 sites within the survey report that they spent almost £11 million on training in the last 12 months. This level of training activity is high, and four fifths of sites had funded training for staff in this period. Most anticipate that their expenditure on training will increase in the next 12 months.