Pharmacist Salaries and Employment in 2024: Retail Employment Collapse Offset by Hospital Boom

It’s time for Drug Channels’ annual look at pharmacist salaries and employment.

There was more bad news, as employment in retail pharmacies and drugstores dropped by 8,500 positions in 2024, following a drop of 4,800 positions in 2023. Employment in mass merchants and supermarkets with pharmacies increased. Meanwhile, employment at hospitals surged to a new high, growing by nearly 7,000 positions in 2024.

Average salaries hit $137,000, but varied widely across practice settings. However, salary growth did not keep pace with overall inflation.

Downsizing by the larger pharmacy chains, combined with Rite Aid’s liquidation, means that 2025 looks even grimmer for retail pharmacists. Full salary and employment data below for your enjoyment or sorrow. Click here to share your thoughts on the pharmacist job market with the Drug Channels LinkedIn community.

Jump to:

• Pharmacist Employment Trends

• Pharmacist Salary Trends

• Methodology

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PHARMACIST EMPLOYMENT TRENDS

The table below profiles overall employment and salaries for U.S. pharmacists in 2024. Details on the data and our methodology are at the bottom of this article.

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Observations about recent employment trends:

• Overall retail pharmacist employment declined for the second year. There were about 170,000 pharmacists employed at all retail outpatient settings: chain drugstores, independent pharmacies, supermarkets, mass merchants, and mail pharmacies. Retail pharmacist employment dropped to its lowest level since DCI began tracking these figures in 2010—even below the 2021 trough during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
  Over the past two years, pharmacist employment in pharmacies and drug stores dropped by more than 13,000 (−9.5%). Employment in mass merchants and grocery stores rose by more than 1,500 (+3.5%).
  
  

• Hospital employment surged in 2024. Total U.S. pharmacist employment at hospitals has grown, from about 68,000 in 2010 to nearly 100,000 in 2024. The share of pharmacists employed by hospitals also grew significantly during this period, from 24% in 2013 to more than 30% in 2024.
  
  For 2024, hospital employment grew by 7.3%, an acceleration from the 2023 growth rate of 5.3%. This growth is occurring as hospitals and health systems pursue specialty pharmacy dispensing revenues, as we document in Section 3.3.5. of our 2025 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers. Note that our figures likely understate pharmacist employment by hospitals, because on-site institutional pharmacies are included within the retail category.
  
  

• Pharmacist jobs continue to increase at other non-retail settings. Total U.S. pharmacist employment in physician offices and outpatient care centers have grown consistently, though they remain a small minority—less than 5% of overall employment. Employment in home health has been more volatile. Employment peaked during the pandemic and has declined over the past two years.
  
  

PHARMACIST SALARY TRENDS

• Pharmacists' salaries across all settings grew in 2024. Overall average salaries across all industry settings reached $137,210—a 1.8% increase over the 2023 figure of $134,790.
  
  Those in retail outpatient dispensing formats (+0.9%; dark blue line in chart below) experienced slower growth compared to the previous year’s growth. Meanwhile, salaries for pharmacists in hospitals and physician offices grew by more than 2%. Home health was the only major setting where pharmacists experienced a decline in annual wages (-0.1%; not shown in chart below).
  
  
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  Overall consumer price inflation (CPI-U) rose by 3.3.% from May 2023 to May 2024 (the measurement period shown above). Thus, pharmacists working across all settings saw a decline in real (inflation-adjusted) average wages.
  
  

• The salary gap between a pharmacy owner and an employed retail pharmacist remains meaningful. Our analysis of industry survey data indicates that the average pharmacist owning a single pharmacy earned about $190,000 in 2023, the most recent year for which data are available. Owning a pharmacy—with all of its associated hassles and obligations—remains somewhat more lucrative than being employed as a pharmacist.
  
  (Note: The "Pharmacies and Drug Stores" category includes both pharmacists employed by independent pharmacies and the paid owners/officers of incorporated independent pharmacies.)
  
  

• Pharmacist salaries exceeded those of other healthcare workers. In 2024, the average salary for all healthcare employees was about $105,220. Pharmacist salaries were nearly $32,000 (+30%) higher than that average.

The data tell a clear story: pharmacy is rapidly moving beyond the counter. As the traditional retail model erodes, growth is shifting toward clinical, institutional, and specialized settings. For pharmacists who adapt, the coming decade may offer more opportunity than the last.

As you consider your own career strategy, I’ll leave you with a reminder from John Maxwell: “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”

NOTES FOR NERDS

• We rely on the 2024 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program (formerly known as the Occupational Employment Statistics program) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). BLS and the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) collaborate on the OEWS survey. BLS funds the survey and dictates its structure, while the SWAs collect most of the data.

• The OEWS survey categorizes workers by detailed occupations based on the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The Pharmacist occupation code is 29-1051. The SOC defines pharmacists’ duties as follows:

  “Dispense drugs prescribed by physicians and other health practitioners and provide information to patients about medications and their use. May advise physicians and other health practitioners on the selection, dosage, interactions, and side effects of medications.”

• Using these data, we identified pharmacists working in various retail and non-retail settings based on the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System).

• Starting with the 2022 OEWS, BLS updated from the 2017 NAICS to the 2022 NAICS. Pharmacist data formerly coded to mail pharmacy establishments within the industry code NAICS 4541 (“Electronic Shopping and Mail-Order Houses”) were reassigned into the corresponding retail NAICS shown in the table above. Consequently, the figures for the retail outpatient subcategories will not be precisely comparable to the figures reported in our analyses published prior to 2022.

• The BLS computes annual wage data by multiplying the mean hourly wage by a "year-round, full-time" figure of 2,080 hours. Figures exclude bonuses and employer costs of nonwage benefits, such as health insurance and contributions to retirement plans.

• The data include pharmacists employed by independent pharmacies and paid owners/officers of incorporated pharmacies, but exclude business owners and partners in unincorporated pharmacies.

• The data show the location of employment as a "pharmacist." They do not specify the duties that the pharmacists perform or the entity that operates the pharmacy.

• The NAICS industry code “446110 Pharmacies and Drug Stores” includes drugstores, independent pharmacies, and on-site institutional pharmacies. Thus, some pharmacists employed in a hospital-owned retail outpatient pharmacies may be classified as employees of retail pharmacies.