Genentech has carried out another round of workforce reductions, cutting 87 positions at its South San Francisco headquarters. The layoffs, filed last week and set to take effect on September 15, were disclosed in a California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) report. According to a company spokesperson, the cuts spanned “multiple departments.”
Under the WARN Act, employers must provide 60 days’ notice when 50 or more employees are affected by layoffs.
This marks at least the fourth wave of job reductions at the Roche subsidiary in the past 15 months, with more than 700 positions eliminated during that period. The latest cuts follow the dismissal of 143 staff members in May, also documented in a WARN notice.
The company noted that approximately 2,000 roles remain open at Roche and it expects its workforce numbers to “remain stable throughout 2025,” although some departmental adjustments may still occur.
The latest layoffs come on the heels of broader restructuring efforts at Genentech. In April last year, the company implemented a 3% workforce reduction, eliminating 436 roles to sharpen focus on its most promising drug candidates. This was followed by a major reorganisation in August, which included shuttering the cancer immunology research department. Additional job cuts affected 93 employees in South San Francisco later that same month.
Roche’s U.S. operations have seen other employment shifts as well. In April, 108 positions were eliminated at its molecular systems division in Santa Clara. Despite the repeated cuts, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant recently announced a $50 billion investment across its U.S. operations, which includes a diagnostics campus in Indianapolis, a new manufacturing facility in North Carolina, and expansion across three research and development sites.
