Thermo Fisher Scientific has implemented a string of layoffs in Carlsbad, California, in recent years, but it appears the company's cost-cutting drive is once again reaching the beachside city.
Thermo Fisher is laying off roughly 85 employees across its locations at Newton Drive and Van Allen Way in Carlsbad, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice filed with the state of California.
The job cuts are expected to become effective Sept. 15.
Thermo Fisher did not immediately respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment on the decision. It isn’t immediately clear what functions are being eliminated in the layoff round.
According to the company’s website, Thermo Fisher employs more than 2,200 people in Carlsbad, which is situated some 35 miles north of downtown San Diego.
Thermo employees in the city work in areas such as R&D, information technology, communications, manufacturing, quality, commercial sales and marketing, the CDMO says on its virtual site map.
Thermo Fisher has been pruning its ranks around the U.S. in recent years. Like many other CDMOs that enjoyed a major sales boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thermo initially struggled to maintain that same magnitude of growth once the situation became endemic.
At the height of the pandemic in 2021, Thermo boosted its head count from 80,000 to 130,000 employees—in part through a series of acquisitions—but the company has been whittling that number down in more recent years.
During the first half of 2025, Thermo Fisher accrued restructuring costs and other expenses related to “charges for headcount reductions and facility consolidations,” the company said in its most recent quarterly securities filing (PDF).
“As of August 1, 2025, the company has identified restructuring actions, primarily in the laboratory products and biopharma services segment, that it expects will result in additional charges of approximately $140 million, primarily in 2025, and expects to identify additional actions in future periods,” the company said in the filing.
Thermo Fisher’s downsizing efforts have already touched Carlsbad, where the contractor confirmed last April that it was laying off 74 employees from the plasmids manufacturing laboratory at its campus there.
Between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, Thermo Fisher dismissed a total of 172 employees across its Carlsbad operations, according to state layoff notices.
More recently, the manufacturer in February said it would lay off 300 workers at its viral vector manufacturing facilities in Cambridge and Plainville, Massachusetts.
The continued cuts come as Thermo Fisher works to gradually make a revenue growth comeback.
The company’s total 2024 revenue of $42.88 billion was flat versus the haul it brought home in 2023, though Thermo’s sales in last year’s fourth quarter increased 5% year over year.
In the first quarter of 2025, Thermo Fisher’s sales were again relatively flat versus the same period in 2024, though the company recently reported a 3% year-over-year revenue increase for the second quarter at $10.85 billion.