Covid-19 Vaccines Are in High Demand, but Thousands More Workers Are Needed to Make Them – The Wall Street Journal

SEOULContract-manufacturing companies working to accelerate the global availability of Covid-19 vaccines are struggling with a shortage of their own: There arent enough workers to meet this years big production push.

The talent pool is so tight that Emergent BioSolutions Inc., a Covid-19 contractor based in Gaithersburg, Md., for AstraZeneca PLC and Johnson & Johnson , enlisted its CEO and a half-dozen other senior executives to pitch potential hires at a virtual career fair in October. More than 550 people attended.

Not enough of them were swayed. More than two months later, Emergent still has roughly 200 openings for warehouse associates, quality-assurance analysts and even a supply-chain management director. Hiring and ramping up has become challenging, said Sean Kirk, an Emergent executive vice president, who spoke at the event.

Outsourcing companies such as Emergent make about one-sixth of complex treatments including vaccines, but the scale and abruptness of Covid-19 shots is likely to boost that share much higher, say industry executives and experts. With demand dwarfing supply, Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and others are turning to contract manufacturers for assistance in what is the largest pharmaceutical rollout in modern history.

But those helping drugmakers need more help themselves. More than 5,000 open jobs exist at the worlds 10 largest companies that have won Covid-19 outsourcing work, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the companies websites. The firms were ranked by production capacity.

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Covid-19 Vaccines Are in High Demand, but Thousands More Workers Are Needed to Make Them - The Wall Street Journal