Report on future of France's drug industry: over one in four jobs to go by 2015

Arthur D Little, the management consulting firm, has produced a gloomy forecast for France's pharmaceutical sector, with a "status quo scenario" generating 28% job losses from the current 105,000 to 83,000 in 2015. The French drug industry association (LEEM), which commissioned the report, has presented a package of measures that, it argues, can limit the degradation of the sector in France.

The report notes the "acceleration of the questioning of the [drug industry's] business model," according to the LEEM. Drugmakers are facing the imperative of change, confronted as they are by a combination of tougher regulatory norms, the implementation of health care spending controls, the threat of new entrants to the market, the rise of parallel imports and the human resources challenge. The latter problem alone involves the restructuring of production processes, the difficulty of retaining talent and the lack of enthusiasm among many young people for employment in the manufacturing sector.

French drug industry has not been idle