How many employees does Pfizer have? Headcount by year from its 10-K

This page is for sellers sizing Pfizer as an account, recruiters, analysts and anyone who needs a Pfizer headcount they can cite. Every figure comes from Pfizer Inc.'s annual report on Form 10-K or its quarterly report on Form 10-Q, filed with the SEC. Pfizer's fiscal year is the calendar year, and it reports its workforce once a year, as of December 31.

Pfizer employees by year

Each 10-K gives the figure as "approximately"; the changes are our arithmetic. Pfizer's 10-Q for the quarter ended June 28, 2026, filed August 4, 2026, doesn't give a headcount, so the next figure is due with the 2026 10-K in early 2027.

What the number includes

• People Pfizer employs, worldwide. The 2025 10-K says: "As of December 31, 2025, we employed approximately 75,000 people worldwide." It doesn't split full-time from part-time, and it gives no contractor figure.
• Acquired companies once they close. The 2023 figure was stated "including Seagen colleagues," after the December 2023 acquisition.
• No longer a US split. Filings for 2020 to 2023 gave the number based in the US; the 2024 and 2025 reports dropped it. At the end of 2023, 35,000 of 88,000 employees, or 40%, were US-based.
• Not Viatris or the consumer business. The off-patent Upjohn business left in November 2020, when it was combined with Mylan to form Viatris, and Consumer Healthcare went into a joint venture with GSK in 2019. Those employees aren't in any count from 2020 on.

What changed and why

• 2019 and 2020: a smaller, focused Pfizer. The Consumer Healthcare joint venture with GSK (July 2019) and the Upjohn spin-off to Viatris (November 2020) took headcount from 92,400 in 2018 to 78,500 in 2020. The 2020 10-K calls this "the culmination of Pfizer's transformation into a more focused, innovative science-based biopharmaceutical products business."
• 2021 and 2022: the COVID years. Revenue rose to $101.2 billion in 2022 with Comirnaty and Paxlovid, and headcount grew to 83,000.
• 2023: Seagen and a new cost program. Pfizer completed its acquisition of Seagen in December 2023, taking the count to 88,000. In the fourth quarter it launched the "Realigning Our Cost Base Program," which "aims to realign our costs with our longer-term revenue expectations" after COVID product sales fell.
• 2024: manufacturing. In the second quarter Pfizer started a Manufacturing Optimization Program to reduce cost of goods sold. Its first phase is expected to cost about $1.4 billion, "primarily representing cash expenditures for severance and implementation costs," and to deliver about $1.5 billion of net cost savings by the end of 2027. Headcount fell 7,000.
• 2025: automation and AI. In the second quarter Pfizer "identified additional productivity opportunities to further reduce costs primarily in SI&A, driven in large part by enhanced digital enablement, including automation and AI." The cost realignment program is now expected to save about $5.7 billion through 2026, $5.1 billion of it achieved by the end of 2025. Headcount fell 6,000, and Pfizer acquired Metsera, an obesity drug developer, in November 2025.

One detail in the 2025 10-K stands out: severance estimates for 2024 and 2025 were revised "driven in large part by higher-than-expected voluntary attrition." In other words, more people left on their own than Pfizer planned for. The filings don't give a number of roles eliminated.

Revenue per employee

Pfizer's 2025 total revenues were $62,579 million. Divided by the year-end headcount, that's $62,579 million ÷ 75,000 = about $834,400 per employee (our calculation).

Revenues are as presented in Pfizer's latest 10-K for each year: in 2024 Pfizer moved royalty income into total revenues and recast 2022 and 2023, so these differ slightly from the originally reported $100.3 billion for 2022 and $58.5 billion for 2023. The 2022 figure is inflated by COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral sales; the recovery since 2023 comes mostly from fewer people. In 2025 the US produced $37.1 billion of revenue (59%) and international markets $25.5 billion. Nearly all revenue is in Pfizer's Biopharma segment; Pfizer CentreOne brought in $1.3 billion.

Selling to a company of Pfizer's size

General guidance on how a 75,000-person drug company buys, not a description of Pfizer's internal processes.

• Follow the three cost levers. The filings name selling, informational and administrative expense (SI&A), manufacturing cost of goods and R&D prioritization. Offers that lower one of them, with numbers, fit the plan.
• Know the regulated workflows. Clinical, manufacturing and promotional systems carry validation and compliance requirements. Budget time for quality and regulatory review as well as security and procurement.
• Find the therapeutic area. Pfizer's growth bets named in the 10-K are obesity (Metsera) and oncology (Seagen). Teams in those areas are more likely to be adding capacity than cutting it.
• Expect global sourcing. With 41% of revenue outside the US, many categories are bought centrally for several regions.

For a routine on an account this size, see enterprise account research. To compare another large US drugmaker, see Merck's headcount. Mapping which of a drugmaker's franchises owns a budget is the slow part; Bebop researches each account and suggests who to talk to, and you should check what it finds against the filings.

Next step: see Pfizer alongside its peers on our list of the largest pharmaceutical companies.