Merck, one of the world’s largest medicine makers, announced that it will cut around 12 per cent, or 7,000 jobs, from its workforce as it revised its guidance for its full-year trading.

Kimberley Clark, the US consumer health company, also announced today that it would reduce its employee levels but declined to give details on numbers.

Today's announcements by Merck and Kimberley Clark is the latest in a round of job cuts in the pharmaceuticals industry which has seen tens of thousands of employees lose their jobs over the past two years.

Merck today announced third quarter sales fell by 2 per cent to $5.9 billion (£3.6 billion) on net income down from $1.5 billion to $1 billion.

Many of the cuts have been to sales teams as the old pharmaceutical model becomes obsolete owing to a lack of revolutionary new products and more direct-to-consumer medicines.

Merck has already cut 10,400 jobs in an earlier restructuring. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugs company, has annonced it will axe 10,000 staff, while British rival, GlaxoSmithKline, has announced plans for around 5,000 redundancies.

AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish group, has said it will cut around 4,600 people from its workforce and Swiss cancer specialist Novartis has announced plans to lose 2,500 staff.

Some companies have also suffered from long and costly class action suits over their drugs.

Merck recently agreed to pay out $4.85 billion to people who suffered heart attacks or strokes after taking its painkiller Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004.

Meanwhile GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the UK drugs giant, reported that its turnover for the third quarter of 2008 fell by 4 per cent to £4.9 billion.

Turnover in the US, the world’s largest pharmaceuticals market, fell by 13 per cent to £2.1 billion as the patents expired on some of the company’s best-selling drugs, opening the door to competition from cheaper generic medicines. However, the impact of this was lessened by the weakness of sterling during the three months between the end of June and the end of September.

GSK forecast mid-single-digit decline in earnings per share (EPS) in local currencies for the full-year. EPS for the quarter was 25.2p, slightly higher than analysts' average forecast of 24.3p.

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