Thermo Fisher's layoff spree continues with 300 dismissals in Massachusetts

Despite recent evidence of its financial turnaround, Thermo Fisher’s layoff spree will continue into 2025.

According to a Massachusetts Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) report from last week, the company will lay off 300 workers at its viral vector manufacturing facilities in Cambridge and Plainville. The notice indicates that the dismissals will take effect on March 30 of this year.

The notification came in the same week that Thermo Fisher reported a 5% year-over-year revenue increase in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The company confirmed the layoffs in an emailed message but did not reveal any other details about the layoffs or the future status of the Cambridge and Plainville plants.

“Thermo Fisher Scientific continuously evaluates opportunities to enhance our operational efficiency and better serve our customers," a company spokesperson said. "In light of recent shifts in customer timelines and utilization needs, we are making strategic business adjustments."

The layoffs come less than three months after the company confirmed a plan to close its viral vector manufacturing factory in Lexington, Massachusetts, and to consolidate operations at its newer Plainville campus, which opened in 2022. Along with that move, the company said it was chopping 160 jobs in Massachusetts between the Lexington, Cambridge and Plainville sites.

During the pandemic, with the boom in demand for drug manufacturing, Thermo went on a growth spree. In 2021, its headcount increased from roughly 80,000 to roughly 130,000. In that year, the company made five acquisitions, including a $17.4 billion buyout of contract research organization PPD.

From 2017 to 2022, the company’s annual revenue more than doubled, from $20.9 billion to $44.9 billion. But since then, Thermo Fisher reported revenue at $42.9 billion in each of the past two years. Last week, the company projected 2025 revenue to come in between $43.5 billion and $44 billion.

The trajectory of Thermo Fisher has mirrored that of several other contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) companies over the last few years.

In addition to the Massachusetts layoffs, in April of last year, Thermo Fisher cut 74 jobs at its plasmids manufacturing lab in Carlsbad, California, which opened in 2021. That move came a year after Thermo Fisher closed its biologics development and cell therapy services facility in Princeton, New Jersey, parting ways with 113 employees.

Additionally, in August of 2023, the company laid off 200-plus staffers at two sites in Alachua, Florida.

Thermo Fisher got its hands on the Lexington, Massachusetts, facility in 2019 when it laid out $1.7 billion to acquire viral vector producer Brammer Bio. Alongside some 600 Brammer employees, Thermo picked up commercial-ready viral vector plants in Cambridge and Lexington plus a preclinical and clinical-stage site in Alachua.