J&J to cut 8190 jobs in these difficult times.

Johnson & Johnson, the consumer goods and healthcare giant, said that it would cut up to 7% of its 117000 employees worldwide, meaning that as many as 8190 people could lose their jobs.

Johnson & Johnson is the latest healthcare company to have decided to slash costs to negotiate the difficulties of funding research into new medicines. As patents on some of its biggest-selling drugs are close to expiring, it needs to find fresh treatments to fill the gap in revenues. However, bringing a new drug to market costs more than $1 billion (£609 million), with many failing in early stage clinical trials.

By 2011, Johnson & Johnson hopes to save $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion a year through the cuts, with an $800 mill-ion to $900 million cost reduction expected next year. It had already cut about 3 per cent of its workforce in July 2007.

William Weldon, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, said:

This is what we need to do to ‘rightsize’ the company to make sure we have the resources to invest.

Job losses = 6190

Source: Business Times Online