Half of Big Pharma’s pledges to invest in US manufacturing, R&D are not new: CBRE

While large pharmaceutical companies in 2025 have announced a total of about $350 billion in multi-year investments in U.S.-based manufacturing and R&D, approximately half of the capital expenditure (CAPEX) announcements are not new, according to commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE.

“We are tracking $350 billion in announcements,” said Matt Gardner, CBRE’s Americas advisory leader for life sciences, during a Tuesday webcast. “As we peel the layers of the onion back on that, we see that about roughly speaking half of what’s represented in those announcements refers to CAPEX that was either already planned or has happened.”

Gardner said there are between $100 billion to $200 billion worth of “net new” projects in Big Pharma’s high-profile 2025 announcements, which he acknowledged still nonetheless represent a “generational build” with most of it in biomanufacturing.

At the same time, Gardner observed that multinational pharma companies are planning to develop new large-scale production sites and are “passing over” smaller and available existing U.S. locations. Already this year, he remarked that there have been “quite a few” greenfield construction projects announced by Big Pharma.  

Among the major investment announcements from drugmakers in 2025, the biggest dollar amounts have come from Johnson & Johnson’s $55 billion commitment and respective pledges of $50 billion each from AstraZeneca and Roche.

CBRE concluded in a press release announcing its 2025 Life Sciences Talent Trends report in June that there’s “more than enough space” to accommodate the sector’s workforce, noting that “robust building in recent years contributed to the average vacancy rate climbing to 21.4% in this year’s first quarter from a recent low of 5% in Q2 2022.”

Manufacturing jobs on the rise

With the increase in onshoring of production, CBRE Associate Research Director Taylor Lee commented that the industry is seeing a potential uptick in manufacturing jobs, given the critical need for a skilled technical workforce to support U.S. growth.

“It’s interesting too to pair that with the layoff announcements we’re seeing, because a lot of companies are choosing to kind of change directions rather than straight layoffs,” Lee said. “We have noticed in some of these reports there’s layoffs but they’re actually rehiring over here.”

Earlier this month, CBRE released its Q2 2025 U.S. Life Sciences figures report which found that while biotech R&D and total life sciences employment was essentially flat in the quarter, life sciences manufacturing employment began to rise.

Ryan Helwig, principal and senior director at TEConomy Partners, said a June 2025 National Life Sciences Workforce Trends Report — developed by the Life Sciences Workforce Collaborative in partnership with TEConomy — surveyed companies about their hiring outlooks and found that manufacturing and production roles are one of the biggest areas of expected demand.

Over the next year, life science companies including biopharmaceutical manufacturers “anticipate hiring large numbers of manufacturing and production workers,” according to the report. “Twenty-eight companies estimate they plan to hire 30 or more workers in these roles, with an additional 10 companies anticipating between 21 to 30 hires.”

Helwig said “large hiring volumes are coming” from companies with between 500 and 1,000 total employees and greater. He also noted that when it comes to biomanufacturing, certain U.S. geographies “have gotten out ahead” of others.    

Lee pointed out that in CBRE’s 2025 annual analysis of 100 U.S. life sciences markets, released in June, Boston-Cambridge beat out New York-New Jersey for the top spot when it comes to core life sciences manufacturing talent.

“Boston is number one far and away and what we mean by core life sciences manufacturing talent is biological and chemical technicians,” Lee said.

These professions have given Boston an edge in more sophisticated biomanufacturing talent, whereas New York-New Jersey has an advantage in talent for high-volume pharmaceutical manufacturing, according to CBRE.