Merck To Cut 500 Jobs Based In Montgomery County

LANSDALE, PA — Merck has announced another round of layoffs impacting their operations in Montgomery County.

The multinational pharmaceutical giant plans to cut some 500 jobs based out of Lansdale and Upper Gwynedd, according to a WARN notice filed Friday with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.

The layoffs will be effective on Jan. 3, 2020. The cuts, which are to sales and commercial jobs, are not union protected.

Though the 500 cuts include some remote workers who are not residing in Pennsylvania, the announcement nonetheless marks a significant hit to the local economy.

And it's not the first recent rollback of Merck's local operations. Back in 2016, the company closed one of its major research facilities in North Wales, cutting around 360 jobs.

The cuts are part of "company-wide efforts to sharpen Merck’s focus on innovative research and development that addresses significant unmet medical needs and on our best opportunities for growth," Pamela Eisele, a spokeswoman for Merck, told the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Merck has some 69,000 employees worldwide, around 12,000 of which work in Pennsylvania.