Gotta love that old BLS screen shot a few posts up. At some point in the last couple months even the BLS had to finally cave, change their story on pharmacists and admit (albeit begrudgingly and only half-heartedly) that there is, indeed, a healthcare job in existence that does not have a stellar job market:
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If it's a healthcare field and even the BLS is admitting that there is a so-so job market, you know things are getting bad.
If their new numbers are accurate, than the pharmacy workforce is growing/will grow by ~4000 jobs per year. How that is going to accommodate the 15,000+ grads that will start coming out of school each year in the near future is hard to imagine. Pharmacists would have to be retiring or leaving the profession at a rate of at least 4%/year....that sure ain't gonna happen.
If you assume a more reasonable retirement rate of maybe 2-2.5%/year and crunch some rough numbers, that popular quote about 20% unemployment of new pharmacy grads by 2020 comes out to be pretty much spot on.
yeah to be honest the 50% figure some are throwing out in my opinion is unrealistic. 20-30% seems a lot more realistic, especially with new schools graduating their first classes in the coming years. healthcare is expanding but nowhere near the rate to employ even current pharmacy graduate size let alone the increase in coming years. there might be more job turnover like CVS which isn't good for the profession at all. you get a job, work 5-10 years, then you're out on the street with no luck. I remember BF7 knew a pharmacist who worked many years, got laid off and in 6 months had 1 interview and didn't get it because he was too old and he was only in his 30s-40s. It's one case but these types of cases never happened before.
what happens after 2020, oh i don't even want to know. i imagine after a couple years of high unemployment or low stability, schools will close as the prepharmers will wake up and realize you know...pharmacy isn't actually that great a field that it used to be. similar to dentistry before when some dental schools closed. the ones that closed are generally private, for profit, newly opened or little history in the school. state/public/federal funded will always be around, they are so entrenched it's near impossible to get rid of them and produce better pharmacy students you'd want to work with to begin with.
The Job saturation is everywhere; Medicine, nursing, law, PhD, Accounting Finance, every job. STOP DISCOURAGING PEOPLE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Job saturation isn't everywhere. Go look at US News, there are 26 fields now better than pharmacy when there used to be 4 last year. Pharmacy is at 27 which is pretty damn good right? Good enough for prepharmers maybe.
PhD, law, are saturated. Nursing some may disagree and say it's great but imo there's some saturation there too actually. Not necessarily from flood of nurses but poorly trained nurses at crap newly opened for profit schools (again watch college inc). I mean a nurse who never set foot in a hospital? Really now?
It's just the reality dude. If the reality is discouraging you then maybe reconsider other fields, there's a lot to choose from. If you're set on pharmacy and understand the risks and that it's not all sunshine and roses and you know yourself well then go ahead do pharmacy. In the end you make your decision. We're not making it for you. Maybe you'll stand out and be better than your peers and competition we don't know that. We're just telling you the reality that current pharmacists are experiencing and what more and more pharmacy experts in the field feel about the profession. Why...is that discouraging you? It should only discourage you if your expectations don't meet reality. Unfortunately some prepharmers have unrealistic expectations based off what they are fed and sold by the ones selling the product, the schools. I'm sure you know it's basic advertising 101.
I wish someone had thrown the book at me and recalibrated my expectations of the field. i would've worked harder in school and taken it more seriously. It wasn't until my last year of school that I realized, "oh crap this field is actually incredibly hard to get a job in my "saturated" area no matter how good a worker i am." it was hard to take anyone voicing the saturation seriously before because there was no evidence and people were still getting sign on bonuses. mind you this was 4-6 years ago which isn't that long ago. i ended up quite fortunate actually. some of my peers don't have jobs and it's almost a year now...others are doing some type of residency/fellowship or w/e training there is which even after that, maybe not so many jobs. note this is now. later there will be more schools/grads.
just don't come back and say i was duped into pharmacy i thought it was a great field but it's totally different than what i anticipated and it's the school's fault! it's not, it'd be your fault. if things turn terrible take responsibility. if things turn out great take responsibility for decisions. in the end, you've been warned and there's real published evidence of current saturation and anticipated unemployment. Those most likely at risk are your small private, newly opened schools trying to survive and make money. otherwise if you have little debt, free ride, go for it regardless of field pharmacy, theater, nursing, computer, whatever. is it so painful for prepharmers to hear actual stories of currently working, actively job seeking pharmacist struggling to find work or keep their jobs because of the constant flood of new grads? i mean come on what were you expecting, a job with your name on it already before you started? some will find work, some won't. even lawyers find jobs. it's just more and more pharmacists, lawyers, aren't going to find jobs due to there not being enough seats. nothing wrong with taking chances but just keep that in mind. hopefully it'll make you work and compete harder in school if anything.
