Eli Lilly and Co.’s career website this month listed 254 job openings in Indianapolis and another 90 in nearby Lebanon, accounting for more than three-quarters of the 445 open positions the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant listed across the United States.
And those are just the current job listings. More are expected in the coming months and years as Lilly builds out massive manufacturing and development investments in Indianapolis, Boone County and across the country amid its booming sales led by GLP-1 blockbusters Zepbound and Mounjaro.
By quick comparison, Lilly has far more job openings in Indiana this month than rivals Bristol Myers Squibb (166) and Merck (71) have in New Jersey, where both companies are based.
“It’s super robust right now, the labor-market demand for our sector,” said Vince Wong, CEO of BioCrossroads, a nonprofit that works to assist, promote and provide information about Indiana’s life sciences industry. “I don’t know that it’s idiosyncratic to Indiana, a challenge to find good talent to fill these jobs. Certainly, it’s a challenge in every community they go into.”
Indeed, Lilly’s surge means communities across the country want a piece of the company, raising the pressure on the region’s workforce to meet the drugmaker’s labor demands.
The experts and industry advocates IBJ spoke with seem confident Indiana can do so.
That’s in part because Indiana has ranked high among states for its skilled technical workforce—people who use science and engineering skills in their jobs but do not have a bachelor’s degree—with about 16% of the workforce in STEM jobs, according to 2021 data from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Indicators.
For workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher, about 10% of the state’s workforce was in STEM. Nationally, about 22% of workers worked in a STEM occupation, compared with almost 26% in Indiana.
One more site to be named
Lilly in recent months has named three of the four manufacturing sites that are part of a $27 billion reshoring investment unveiled early this year. So far, Virginia (650 jobs expected), Texas (615 jobs) and Alabama (450 jobs) are set to host new Lilly facilities, with the announcement of the final U.S. site expected in the coming weeks.
The company has said the investments are part of $50 billion in U.S. capital expansion commitments it has made since 2020. Nine new Lilly U.S. manufacturing sites have been announced over that time.
Lilly has said jobs at the plants will include engineers, scientists, operations managers and lab technicians.
Many of the open positions on Lilly’s career site are also highly scientific—the hundreds of job descriptions for Indianapolis vacancies, for example, include a senior computational statistician, a director of neuroscience and a lead engineering technician for third shift, which runs from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.
Wong noted that the openings are across a variety of disciplines, from engineers to manufacturing operators and technicians.
Observers say Indiana’s workforce should be well-positioned for continued investment from Eli Lilly and other life sciences companies. But those efforts could meet headwinds.
“There’s no reason that Indiana cannot win more fixed assets on the ground from Eli Lilly,” said Phil Powell, executive director of the Indiana Business Research Center and clinical professor of business economics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Bloomington. “We’ve got to compete.”
Powell said Indiana already has a strong concentration of life sciences companies. He also praised efforts over the last several years such as IU’s launch of IU Health, its work with the 16 Tech Innovation District, and Purdue’s partnership with Elanco Animal Health in planning a One Health Innovation District.
But he does see signs of strain. In the Indiana Business Review’s 2025 Indianapolis forecast, Powell noted that from May 2019 to May 2023, employment in life, physical and social science—a broad statistical category that includes jobs from microbiologists to economists—occupations fell 12.2%, and employment in architecture and engineering occupations fell 7.4% in the Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson metro area.
“Strong growth is needed in both occupational categories if Indianapolis is going to remain strong in life sciences and advanced manufacturing,” he wrote.
Huge investments in Indy
As of the end of September, Lilly had 50,009 employees worldwide, an increase of about 15,000 over the past five years. About 28% of its global workforce—more than 14,000—is in Indiana, mostly in Indianapolis where Civil War Col. Eli Lilly founded the business on Pearl Street in 1876.
Lilly has made huge investments at the LEAP Lebanon Research and Innovation District in Boone County, committing to spend $9 billion building two facilities there. The site represents the single largest investment in U.S. history for manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API, Lilly has said.
The company has projected that those facilities will employ more than 900 highly skilled workers when they are operational by 2028.
Also in Lebanon, Lilly is investing $4.5 billion to create the Lilly Medicine Foundry, which focuses on advanced manufacturing and drug development. The foundry, expected to open in 2027, is expected to employ about 500.
Lilly CEO David Ricks, speaking to media after the BioCrossroads Life Sciences Summit in November, said many factors go into attracting top talent for life sciences jobs.
“Quality of life is an important thing. That’s about schools, about neighborhoods, parks, recreation, making the city more attractive, and safety is a part of that, as well. We’re downtown, so that’s a reality we have to deal with,” Ricks said.
Of education in Indiana, he said: “We have to improve math and science education, K-12.”
Lilly has been aggressive in helping to prepare Hoosier students to work for the company or elsewhere in life sciences through its scholarship programs and other initiatives.
Dedric Day, who studied chemical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, spent more than 20 years in manufacturing roles at Lilly before taking a job in 2023 focused on workforce development.
“This is a historic time for us, embarking upon a journey where we’re opening up an unprecedented number of sites,” said Day, Lilly’s senior director of strategic talent partnerships.
He said Lilly’s efforts focus on key workforce needs for Indiana, such as preventing “brain drain,” in which educated people leave the state, investing in workforce training and readiness, and expanding access to educational opportunities for students. He said Lilly targets students at Purdue University, Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame and Ivy Tech Community College.
For example, the $42.5 million Lilly Scholars at Purdue program pays for up to eight semesters of tuition for as many as 100 undergraduates a year. The program also offers a guaranteed paid internship at Lilly during the student’s sophomore year, with the ability to apply for another internship or employment after graduation.
Lilly has a similar program at Ivy Tech. In April 2023, as Lilly announced further expansion in the LEAP district, the company also said it had committed $15 million over five years for a Lilly Scholars Program at Ivy Tech.
That effort will fund up to 1,000 scholarships for people interested in pursuing careers in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
When applying for the scholarships, students only have to say they are interested in working in the pharmaceutical industry and for Lilly, Day said. The scholarship is paid whether they eventually work for Lilly or not.
“That shows the commitment of Lilly,” he said. “Obviously, we want them to become Lilly employees.”
Stiff competition for Indiana
Plenty of places want a Lilly manufacturing site.
For example, the planned Alabama facility prevailed over more than 300 bids, Lilly said, and that state’s workforce was among many considerations.
“Lilly has an interest in diversifying their manufacturing base across the country,” said BioCrossroads’ Wong, citing access to tax incentives, utilities and climate as factors in Lilly’s decisions.
Politics is likely another potent factor in the reshoring effort. So far, all three states picked for sites have Republican governors.
Lilly’s reshoring efforts were announced early this year amid the Trump administration’s rollout of tariffs.
The company also announced this fall an agreement with the U.S. government to expand access to obesity medications and reduce costs for patients on government insurance programs and those paying for the drugs out of pocket. The deal also reduces tariff burdens on Lilly.
“I’m sure the politics behind the scenes are pretty intricate around why those locations are chosen,” said George Ball, associate professor at IU’s Kelley School. “It’s hard to know how much influence the current administration is having over these decisions, but these companies are very smart.
“They want to please the current administration, and so by picking states with Republican governors, does that please the administration? Probably more so than the opposite, that’s for sure.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey—all three Republicans—took part in the Lilly announcements in their states.
Each state has its own strategy and appeal.
For example, at the September announcement of Lilly’s $6.5 billion plant to be built in Houston’s Generation Park, CEO Ricks cited the city’s ability to offer top-notch talent rooted in a history in the energy, aerospace and medical industries.
Abbott touted that Houston is home to the world’s largest medical complex, the Texas Medical Center.
Diane Tennenhouse, site head for Lilly in Houston, said educational requirements for the new Lilly facility range from high school or GED to doctorates. She said San Jacinto College’s campus in Generation Park has a nationally recognized biomanufacturing training program and a new center for biotechnology.
Lilly is an active partner and investor in many such programs and efforts in Indiana.
Despite his praise for Indiana’s life sciences efforts, Powell of the IU Kelley School said local leaders need to study their competitors.
“If we’re not knowledgeable of what every other state is doing, what we think is good might be in the middle of the pack,” he said. “It’s just really competitive out there.”
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