This is a big pharma world, but a great deal of the action, or at least the decision making, takes place in New Jersey, where so many drugmakers have global or US headquarters. So watching the employee headcount go up or down - mostly down, these past few years - is something of a sport.

Unfortunately, the cupboard is looking barer this week as three drugmakers start throwing people overboard. Schering-Plough, for instance, is eliminating 500 jobs as part of its previously announced cutbacks resulting from the slump in Vytorin and Zetia prescriptions.

Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho-Biotech unit, meanwhile, is axing 289 positions, and shifting another 260 to Pennsylvania, where those jobs will be consolidated into J&J’s Centocor unit, a move that was leaked three months ago, as part of a . Abbott Labs, which isn’t headquartered in the Garden State, is trimming 83 jobs.

The projected layoffs were reported this morning by The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and were posted on the NJ Labor Department web site, where employers must provide layoff notice under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The cutbacks, of course, are part of the wider industry trend, as you can see here.