BTW, I thought I saw someone mention Pharmcist Labor Supply and Demand Studies. There were studies published in 2000 and 2007. The purpose of the 2007 study was to revise the prediction made in 2000. So basically the predictions made in 2000 were wrong in many accounts. It didn't predict the increase in PharmD program. Also, the expansion of pharmacist clinical roles didn't materialize.
Even in 2007 study, it states the lable of increase in Education volume is unpredictable. In 2000, there were about 7500 graduates... I think we now have over 11,000 graduating every year..and it's increasing.
My point is the the 2000 DHS study was wrong. And I will say that the 2007 prediction is probably wrong but right about inability to correcly predict the growth of pharmacist supply. I will say there will be another study in 3 years to revise the predictions made in 2007.
Bottom line... don't depend your future on these studies.
I was one of those that mentioned a few of these studies (Pharmacy Manpower, DHS) as defense of my stance toward pharmacy job prospects. I am also going to include a link to at least one of these thorough studies I mentioned (which was posted by somebody else on one of the many "the sky is falling" forums).
http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/pharmacy/conclusions.htm
This is a fairly detailed study (2004) which discusses the pharmacy workforce and has projection data for different types of scenarios (low growth, normal growth, high growth). They also include areas of their study that are thorough and some of the ways the data could be faulty. I put some faith in this study since they mention and take into account the schools they expect to be open by 2010 (and their prediction is rather close, they predicted ~110 schools by 2010 and I think there are 111(?) now). All educated people understand that projections are just that; a projection....some of the projections will be false and some will be true. But, to discount it completely, without bothering to elaborate on parts that have been proven to be valid or invalid, is particularly disturbing to me. As a scientist, I thought I was entering pharmacy---a scientific field....hopefully, SDN as a whole is not indicative of the normal pharmacy practitioner.
I came on SDN to have a thorough discussion / debate of the many topics being discussed on SDN, but what happens more often than not is that the discussion degrades into a name-calling, your opinion doesn't count because you don't have this title, this experience, etc or the discussion goes off on some wild tangent completely unrelated to the original topic. In this discussion alone, I have been called "innocent", ignorant of the pharmacy job market, etc. I will admit that I don't know enough about the job market or pharmacy in general, but I don't make comments without some semblance of evidence / data to backup these comments. It seems that my status as a pre-pharm on this forum has relegated me to "less intelligent" status even though I already have a doctorate with over 10 years experience in the "real world".
In my humble opinion, the job market has changed drastically in the past 5 to 6 years and the job offers and job prospects have come out of the clouds and returned to earth and this has concerned a lot of people. It has a lot to do with perspective --- something that i will relate to my experience teaching organic chemistry. Biology majors typically struggle with organic chemistry because it is harder than the classes they normally take, but if you are an engineer and take organic chemistry, you will probably think it's pretty easy compared to your normal classes. To relate this to the pharmacy workforce, if you went in to pharmacy thinking you would have the best pick of jobs, hours and location in addition to a nice signing bonus, then this job market is probably a big surprise. To somebody who expects to struggle looking for a job (and has experience struggling to find a job) then this job market is probably no big surprise.
Looking forward to the onslaught of comments......
