Major NC employer Novo Nordisk to cut 9,000 jobs. Will Triangle be affected?
The Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced Wednesday it will lay off more than 11% of its global workforce, roughly 9,000 employees, as the company with a major presence in Johnston County looks to reorganize during a tumultuous period.
“Over the past years, Novo Nordisk’s rapid scaling has increased organisational complexity and costs,” the company said in a statement. “The transformation aims at addressing that complexity.”
Of the job cuts, 5,000 are expected to be made in Denmark. Novo Nordisk, which makes the popular weight-loss and diabetes treatments Wegovy and Ozempic, said it couldn’t share specifics on possible North Carolina layoffs until it finalized its plans and notified staff in accordance with local labor laws.
“This is a global transformation,” the company said in a statement to The News & Observer. “And each country, site or region will be impacted differently.”
Novo Nordisk is the largest private employer in Johnston County, where the company opened its first U.S. manufacturing site in the early 1990s. Last year, the pharmaceutical giant announced a record expansion at its Clayton site: a $4.1 billion investment and the promise of 1,000 more jobs. Novo Nordisk’s stock at the time was near an all-time high, $142 a share, as surging demand for obesity treatments boosted the company that had historically focused on diabetes.
Novo Nordisk committed to open another 1.4 million square feet of production space in Johnston County by the end of the decade. “We can confirm that all major ongoing projects are expected to continue,” the company told The N&O on Thursday.
Why Novo Nordisk has struggled
Since last year, Novo has struggled to maintain its momentum. The company replaced its CEO in August, and its stock price has fallen to around $54 a share. It also lowered its 2025 sales outlook ahead of last month’s earnings report and noted the continued competitive threat of compound drug alternatives.
“It was like death by a thousand cuts,” said Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO who covers both Novo Nordisk and its top competitor, Eli Lilly. Among these cuts, Seigerman said, were supply issues, disappointing results for its next generation weight-loss product and lower-than-consensus growth targets.
“All of a sudden, Lily was really moving ahead,” he said.
Eli Lilly makes its rival obesity and diabetes treatments, Zepbound and Mounjaro, at two North Carolina facilities, including at its Research Triangle Park location.
Interest in all four GLP-1s — Zepbound, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic — has soared in recent years as public awareness grew for these appetite-suppressing obesity treatments.
“Novo had significant supply issues,” said Michael DiFiore, an analyst at the New York City investment firm Evercore. “I think those have since become rectified and corrected. But for a good, almost a good year, demand vastly outstripped supply.”
While Eli Lilly is new to the Tar Heel State, having opened sites in RTP and Concord this decade, Novo Nordisk has built its largest U.S. product supply footprint in North Carolina over three decades. The company now employs around 2,700 people across four sites in the Triangle area — three at its Clayton campus and a smaller Durham facility.
