Here are some assumptions I’ll make to try and do a better estimate:
•Average number of workers per store = 30 (pharmacists, techs, floor staff, managers, admin etc.)
•3-5 pharmacists per store (including 1-2 staff, 1 rxm, 1-2 floaters, 1-2 paid interns/grad interns)
•Pharmacists make on average 3x more than one of aforementioned workers
Based on above assumptions, if there are 3 pharmacist FTEs allocated to each store then
(3x3)/(3x3 +27x1) = 25%. This means that pharmacists make up about 25% of each store’s payroll. Therefore, if store employees and pharmacists are laid off at the same ratios then $700m x 25% = $175m is the total salary of pharmacists that needs to be cut.
My severance estimate is a gross overestimation of what will actually be paid to pharmacists and in reality most pharmacists will likely get a 6-10 week package. So assuming a $60/hr 40 hr rate, the average severance package for a pharmacist using 10 weeks would come out to be $24k pretax. $175m/$24k ~ 7,300 pharmacists that need to go.
I’m sure that there are back-end adjustments and maybe even corporate layoffs (that don’t affect front-line staff) that can skew these numbers but I think it would be easy to see them laying off at least 1,000 pharmacists based on these numbers, don’t you think?