Massachusetts’ life sciences sector, long one of the state’s signature industries, is going through another rough patch. Fourteen companies announced layoffs in the first quarter of 2026, cutting a combined 745 jobs across the state’s biotech and pharma cluster.

A pause, then a reversal

Layoff activity in the sector had been easing toward the end of 2025, giving the industry some room to hope the worst had passed. That reprieve didn’t last. Tracking from the Boston Business Journal shows the pace of cuts picking back up in the first months of 2026, with job losses spread across more than a dozen companies rather than concentrated in one or two large employers.

Part of a broader strain on the state’s core industries

The renewed biotech layoffs are landing at the same time other pillars of the Massachusetts economy — higher education and health care among them — are also under financial pressure. Venture capital’s share of funding flowing to the state’s life sciences companies has slipped, and the number of companies receiving funding has declined as well, making it harder for early-stage biotechs to bridge the gap after a round of cuts.

Why it matters beyond biotech

Life sciences has been one of the largest sources of high-wage employment growth in Greater Boston over the past two decades, and hiring in the sector has a outsized ripple effect on lab real estate, specialized construction, and professional services. Continued layoffs, even at a moderate pace, are one reason the state’s overall job growth — positive on paper — still feels uneven to workers in Cambridge, Lexington, and the other lab-heavy suburbs that built their local economies around the industry’s expansion.

What to watch

Boston Made’s Economy desk will track quarterly layoff totals as they’re reported, along with lab vacancy rates and venture funding data, to see whether this is a short-lived correction or the start of a longer contraction.

Massachusetts added 8,400 payroll jobs in June 2026, and the state’s unemployment rate fell to 4.4% — below the national rate of 4.2% — according to the latest state labor market report.

A rebound after a soft May

The June gain follows a revised loss of 4,100 jobs in May, underscoring how choppy month-to-month hiring has been this year. Zooming out, the state has added 24,800 jobs since last September, with 21,700 of those in the private sector.

Where the growth is coming from

Job gains in June were broad-based:

• Private education and health services: +5,900
• Construction: +3,700
• Professional and business services: +2,300
• Manufacturing: +400

The state’s labor force actually shrank by 6,000 people in June, but officials attribute that mainly to retirements rather than discouraged workers leaving the job hunt. Labor force participation in Massachusetts remains at 65.3%, a full 3.8 percentage points above the national average — a sign that, retirements aside, more of the state’s working-age population is in the labor market than in most of the country.

The bigger picture

“Massachusetts saw the unemployment rate drop again and continues to see strong payroll job growth, with average monthly job growth outpacing the U.S. over the past year,” the state’s chief economist noted, pointing to gains spread across health care, education, construction, manufacturing, and professional services.

That said, the health care and biotech sectors haven’t been uniformly strong this year — life sciences employers cut hundreds of jobs in the first quarter, a reminder that the state’s labor market is recovering unevenly across industries even as the headline numbers improve.