According to foreign media reports, Merck, a global pharmaceutical giant , has filed a new Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (DRM) document with the New Jersey state government, indicating that the company will lay off 88 employees at its global headquarters in Rowe, New Jersey . The personnel changes are scheduled to take effect in September 2026.

This round of layoffs of 88 people is a microcosm of Merck's broader strategic restructuring. In July 2025, Merck officially disclosed in its second-quarter financial report that it had launched a comprehensive cost-cutting plan with the goal of saving $3 billion annually by the end of 2027 , and reinvesting these savings to support the launch of new products.

Behind the layoffs lies two structural pressures facing Merck. First, the patent protection for its blockbuster drug Keytruda is about to expire . This "king of drugs" contributed approximately $31.7 billion in sales to Merck in 2025, accounting for nearly half of the company's total annual revenue ($65 billion). However, its US patent is expected to expire in 2028, and several biosimilar companies are poised to enter the market, at which point Keytruda will face fierce price competition.

Secondly, there is the sharp decline in demand for Gardasil (the HPV vaccine) . In the second quarter of 2025, sales of the vaccine plummeted from $2.5 billion in the same period of the previous year to $1.1 billion. As a result, Merck announced in early 2026 the closure of its Gardasil manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina, laying off 154 employees.

Merck is not the only pharmaceutical giant in New Jersey streamlining its workforce. In recent months, news of layoffs in the state's pharmaceutical industry has been frequent: Johnson & Johnson cut 56 jobs at its New Brunswick headquarters due to the divestiture of its orthopedics business; Novartis cut 76 jobs at its East Hanover headquarters, affecting its biomedical research division; and BioMarin cut 58 jobs at its Princeton headquarters after acquiring Amicus Therapeutics.

From a broader perspective, the wave of layoffs in pharmaceutical companies from 2025 to 2026 is essentially a structural adjustment by large pharmaceutical companies under the triple pressure of patent cliffs, product cycle fluctuations, and rising R&D costs.

On the one hand, Merck is reducing costs through layoffs and capacity optimization, and on the other hand, it is actively planning for the future . In recent years, the company has acquired Acceleron Pharma for approximately $11.5 billion to obtain the new drug Winrevair for pulmonary arterial hypertension, reached a collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo for a total of $22 billion on three ADC drugs, and continues to invest in strategic areas such as oncology and vaccines.

In conclusion , for Merck, the layoff of 88 people at headquarters is just a small fraction of its global workforce reduction plan of 6,000. However, it once again confirms an industry reality: against the backdrop of the impending expiration of Keytruda's patent and the restructuring of product demand in the post-pandemic era, even the world's leading pharmaceutical giants must continuously streamline their organizations to make room for the launch of the next generation of blockbuster drugs. This strategic restructuring, ostensibly for efficiency, continues.

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