Report: Amgen to Relocate or Lay Off 500 Employees

As many as 500 Amgen Inc. employees in Thousand Oaks have been notified that they will either be relocated, reassigned or laid off, according to a report from Thousand Oaks Acorn. On March 22, the same day the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. announced the company’s new 136,000-square-foot capability center in Tampa, Fla., the biotech company notified some local employees that they will move to the Tampa facility or other locations in San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass. The restructuring will take place over the next year and a half with approximately 50 employees heading to Tampa and 100 to Cambridge and San Francisco, as reported in the Pacific Coast Business Times. The remaining affected staff will either be reassigned within the Thousand Oaks complex at 1 Amgen Center Dr. or laid off with a benefits package. Approximately 5,500 employees currently work at Amgen’s Thousand Oaks facility, so the announcement affects about 8 percent of staff. Amgen shares closed Monday down 83 cents, or a fraction of a percent, to $164.91 on the Nasdaq.