Pharmacy Job Market

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PharmDBro2017 said:
Why merge "It's Not Our Profession, It's Our Society - A Little Perspective" thread into here and but not even repost it?

Let things run their course a little more, please. I don't see the sense in merging that here so quickly.
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Yeah.. in addition I don’t like the idea of having a single thread to talk about the job market. If the purpose of this forum is to freely disseminate information about the profession, then a pre-pharm and/or non-pharmacist should be able to peruse the forum and say “Well gee, it seems like almost every thread here is about how terrible the job market is. Maybe I should do more research and/or not pursue this profession” as opposed to “well the job market seems pretty good, since there’s only one thread about it”.

From an organizational standpoint too I think it’s easier to search for specific job market-related discussions in separate threads using keywords than searching through a megathread to look for something specific.
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the turn over rate at CVS is high, that is well known. but why where they forced to resign or fired? under performance, being paid too much??
 
I know one who was fired and 1 who was forced to retire
 
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I see your point. This specific segment was created due to the high volume of users wishing to focus this topic in one area.

Would everyone prefer the “Job Market” to act as a sub forum and post new threads within said forum?

PharmDBro2017 said:
Why merge "It's Not Our Profession, It's Our Society - A Little Perspective" thread into here and but not even repost it?

Let things run their course a little more, please. I don't see the sense in merging that here so quickly.
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Pharmacy is a Scam said:
Yeah.. in addition I don’t like the idea of having a single thread to talk about the job market. If the purpose of this forum is to freely disseminate information about the profession, then a pre-pharm and/or non-pharmacist should be able to peruse the forum and say “Well gee, it seems like almost every thread here is about how terrible the job market is. Maybe I should do more research and/or not pursue this profession” as opposed to “well the job market seems pretty good, since there’s only one thread about it”.

From an organizational standpoint too I think it’s easier to search for specific job market-related discussions in separate threads using keywords than searching through a megathread to look for something specific.
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BC_89 said:
I see your point. This specific segment was created due to the high volume of users wishing to focus this topic in one area.

Would everyone prefer the “Job Market” to act as a sub forum and post new threads within said forum?
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That would be a good idea as well.
 
Is this retail only? At my LTC-owned-by-CVS one RPh quit and one was let go due to decreased workload and lost facility contracts.
 
Not cvs. 1 too slow, 2 too many mistakes, 1 background check was judged "bad" after 8 yrs with the company, 1 diverting oxy, 1 gy quit rage leaving the pharmacy wide open, 1 not following safety protocol, 1 cheating on time punches, 1 tardy and unreliable.
 
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Momus said:
Not cvs. 1 too slow, 2 too many mistakes, 1 background check was judged "bad" after 8 yrs with the company, 1 diverting oxy, 1 gy quit rage leaving the pharmacy wide open, 1 not following safety protocol, 1 cheating on time punches, 1 tardy and unreliable.
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Ugh wow. Can you elaborate not following safety protocol?
 
owlegrad said:
He merged it because I asked him to. We don’t need a new thread every time someone thinks they have an original thought about the job market. Those go here.


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you don't need it but the people do! what are you? a dictator?
 
CNJ_Anon said:
Compensation $30-40/hr for this Jersey City, NJ independent pharmacist-in-charge position posted on craigslist today. It's about 5 miles from Manhattan.


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I think this will be the new normal. 30 USD an hour is still 60,000 a year well above the average for a individual living in the US. I would take that job in a heart beat.
 
Modest_anteater said:
I think this will be the new normal. 30 USD an hour is still 60,000 a year well above the average for a individual living in the US. I would take that job in a heart beat.
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I think people may stop enrolling in pharmacy school if that becomes the new normal. You have to factor in student loans especially with cost of attendance always increasing every year. People will probably deem it no worth it for that pay and go a technician route
 
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owlegrad said:
He merged it because I asked him to. We don’t need a new thread every time someone thinks they have an original thought about the job market. Those go here.


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While some of the job market threads are beating a dead horse, that one was actually original and a bit refreshing on the topic. Plus you didn't copy/paste any of it in here, you just locked/deleted the thread and now it is gone?

It is never a bad thing to have 3-5-10 threads talking about how terrible the job market is on the first page or two in our forum.
 
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^Maybe we should created a sub forum: Pharmacy job market: the bad and the ugly
 
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gopoopants said:
I think people may stop enrolling in pharmacy school if that becomes the new normal. You have to factor in student loans especially with cost of attendance always increasing every year. People will probably deem it no worth it for that pay and go a technician route
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Oh I absoluetly agree. There are probably seasoned pharm techs in California making over 60k a year (SF). And I think that in 2025 we will start to see the first pharm schools begin to shut down. Maybe around 15% will go bankrupt and it will truly be a tough time for pharmDs. Then the market will begin to recover.
 
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Average base salary for pharmacists was ~46k (for men) in 1990. This is equivalent to 88k in 2018 dollars.

Pharmacists' compensation and work patterns, 1990-91. - PubMed - NCBI

If current trends continue (chains relying on a combination of inflation + minimal raises and dropping starting wages + getting rid of high earners), still have quite some time to go to hit 40/hr en masse. Inflation is gonna do work though
 
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Modest_anteater said:
in 2025 we will start to see the first pharm schools begin to shut down. Maybe around 15% will go bankrupt and it will truly be a tough time for pharmDs. Then the market will begin to recover.
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The catch being that IF pharmacy schools finally put caps on class sizes in 2025 based on market demand, you’d still have to absorb the current unemployed/underemployed pharmacist plus the oversupply of pharmacists from 2019-2028 into the job market (because the class size cap won’t be felt until 3-4 years after the policy is put in place). That means that at minimum there will be at least 9 more years of extra pharmacists being cranked out even if schools decided to do something about it. Of course, for the market to truly equilibrate then pharmacy schools have to accept LESS students than market demand, not accept the SAME amount of students as the market demand.

I’m not an economist, but basic math should dictate why. Let’s say your goal in a class is to finish with a 90% as the final grade. Your first five test scores are as follows:

100%
100%
100%
100%
100%

How then do you average a 90%? If you start scoring 90% on all your remaining tests, your average will begin to approach 90% but it will always be greater than 90%. If you started scoring below the average, let’s say 88%, then you would need to score 88% 25 TIMES in order for the average to drop to 90%.

This simple analogy means that if there is a 10% oversupply of pharmacists being trained each year, then it’s going to take 25 years of “demand exceeding supply by 2%” for the market to stabilize. In the meantime, for those unemployed pharmacists, they’ve just got to suck it up and doing something else for the next 25 years while they wait for jobs to become realistically attainable.

Of course, there have been some calculations done on this forum that projects a 50% oversupply of fresh new grads who are graduating each year so my numbers are very conservative...
 
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9pharmd said:
The threads were getting repetitive before this, which is less constructive.

How's the job market in the NYC / NJ metropolitan area?
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4 pharmacist quit at the hospital I work at. However, we have a hiring freeze at the moment.
 
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samven582 said:
4 pharmacist quit at the hospital I work at. However, we have a hiring freeze at the moment.
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What is the starting pay for staff pharmacists at your hospital? and is it true they are union?
 
Modest_anteater said:
What is the starting pay for staff pharmacists at your hospital? and is it true they are union?
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Yes, it's union. Starting pay with no experience is $54. As for scheduling, it will be flex but mostly midnights (5 on 2 off). No NYC hospital that comes to my mind does 7/7 off or 4/3 schedule.
 
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samven582 said:
Yes, it's union. Starting pay with no experience is $54. As for scheduling, it will be flex but mostly midnights (5 on 2 off). No NYC hospital that comes to my mind does 7/7 off or 4/3 schedule.
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thanks
 
Pharmacy is a Scam said:
Why is it unsustainable? They will keep lowering admission standards to keep their seats filled. Matter of fact they are still opening up new pharmacy schools in this day and age, and schools are hiring fresh PGY-1 grads for faculty positions. I’d imagine that in the next 5-10 years we’re going to start seeing schools hire faculty straight out of school with no additional training.

If it’s unsustainable because easy federal loan money might go away in the future, then this will affect all professions/graduate programs and not just pharmacy.
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Schools are having issues staffing a full cohort each year. It's not a sustainable business. Sure it will be awhile before the declining admissions catch up with the programs, but it will happen eventually. The only way this holds is if demand goes up, which it won't, it will remain the same or decrease as the number of programs continues to increase. Pharmacy will experience a septic shock phenomenon.
 
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Look at what pharmacists make in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia. We may see pharmacist compensation from 2000-2020 be considered a historical anomaly once inflation and stagnant wages take their toll.
 
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samven582 said:
Yes, it's union. Starting pay with no experience is $54. As for scheduling, it will be flex but mostly midnights (5 on 2 off). No NYC hospital that comes to my mind does 7/7 off or 4/3 schedule.
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Benefit 5 on 2 off is -10 yrs of your life. Not a bad perk.
 
Seriously Serious said:
Schools are having issues staffing a full cohort each year. It's not a sustainable business. Sure it will be awhile before the declining admissions catch up with the programs, but it will happen eventually. The only way this holds is if demand goes up, which it won't, it will remain the same or decrease as the number of programs continues to increase. Pharmacy will experience a septic shock phenomenon.
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As opposed to the atrial fibrillation pharmacy already experienced from 2014 and forward?

To continue the "septic shock" metaphor, I am using the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Pocket Guide (2012) as a humorous reference for the following quote:

"I am surprised that crystalloid fluids (grant money), vasopressors (appropriate preceptors), inotropic therapy (rotation sites for training said students), and corticosteroids (depression and mental health support) were not considered in treating this "septic shock" phenomenon. I am even more surprised that students continue to neglect the warning signs we post here in favor of an "all-positivity, no-negativity" mentality to drive their thinking (reference to USFCOP)."

Extending the metaphor even further: The sustainability of any organization (school or not) rests in the ability to achieve buy-in from leadership (stakeholders and such), like the Board of Education members for instance and those funding grants. The funny (and sad) thing is that the students are buying into such garbage. Because if the students buy into such an approach, despite all reason and logic, the students will defend the school and its ideals no matter how buy-in was achieved. Once that buy-in is achieved it will be very difficult to fight such a system. The students may not know their very system is in septic shock, because septic shock, in general, has early signs. Students have bought into this mentality so much that they do not notice the symptoms and are unable to effectively treat it.

The very sad part: this buy-in is working.

The Surviving Septic Shock (ahem, Pharmacy) Campaign, 2019 and forward. Metaphorically speaking, what guidelines do we have on correcting this "septic shock" phenomenon for the pharmacy profession?

I wonder...
 
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We have kept talking on the forum about saturation for 7-8 years but the last year seems to have reaslly been brutal where we have started seeing the effects in the market very clearly

We have a few different threads about decrease in starting pay/hours. Can you please list yours below as follows so we can get a better sense of market for new grads if you graduated in 2017, 2018 or expect to graduate in 2019-

Offer date - (eg.e. Mar 18)
Company - (eg.e. cvs, walgreens, kroger)
Area - (e.g.. city name or broad area such as large city in midwest)
Hours guaranteed - (eg.e. 32)
Starting salary - (eg.e. 54/hour)
 
can anyone help but wonder what the future holds for the current pharnacy students? Tons of debt and no jobs. I would be so depressed under the weight of student loans. I wish I could tell them to wake the **** up and get out
 
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Negative recruiting for the profession really should start at the pre-pharm level. I propose that the folks who go out to pre-pharmacy clubs to give talks about the profession should pull a 180 and instead start presenting about not becoming a pharmacist. Want to give a presentation on the future of pharmacy? Sure! Let’s review the data on saturation!
 
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I suspect during the next downturn there will be a fair amount of layoffs of pharmacists based on annual review scores. They cannot target workers by age, but if 75% of the workforce is on a higher wage scale than they would like then the layoff will do the job of getting wages more in line with what the company wants.
 
Jeff Bezos will save us all. When Amazon pharmacy opens up and is completely automated and mailed we can sit back and earn checks.
 
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Havequestion said:
Just let them do what they want. Most of them are in early 20s. Let them make mistake and learn from it. They have plenty of time.
I just canceled my interview with my instate school today. I’m in Texas, one of the largest markets in the nation with lowest tuition.

Pre-pharms, not all, especially those without connections and those who consulted their parents for direction. Your parents are out of touch with the current job market. Ask them when was the last time they look for professional/PhD holder jobs.

Your task:
Open web browser, go to Indeed and search pharmacist for the entire US. Then open another window and search physician for entire US.
Look at the number and do you own analysis.
My hints: 14000 pharmacists and 20000 physicians graduate every year.


I will delete this reply in few hours. I can’t save all.
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So you didn’t go to the interview for pharmacy school and decided to pursue a different field?
 
I didn’t. But I know that one of the schools I applied to accepts people with PCAT in ~30 range percentile. The interview is just there as a part of the procedure. Yes, it was to weed out bad candidates, but that’s few years a go. Now, if you were invited for an interview, 90% you will be accepted.

You can check by Google any pharmacy school and put statistics at the end then analyze the stats yourself.

By the way, I have 3.7 prereq GPA. I came in unprepared for one section and got **** score on that section but still end up with ~90 percentile PCAT.
 
Your stats and circumstances might be different. I just want to share what I found. I am not trying to talk anyone out of pharmacy.
I just, personally, don’t want to spend hundred thousands of dollar and hard work for a chance to work especially with a doctor degree.
Keep going if you feel pharmacy is what fulfill your true inner self.
 
Offer date - received January '19, I'm class of 2019
Company - Rite Aid
Area - smallish city in the Northeast
Hours guaranteed - 30 (really 60 biweekly)
Starting salary - $51/hr

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
 
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1) They are fearful that they will have "wasted" a few years of prerequisites. They do not want to look at other professions because it takes additional mental energy and/or they have developed an emotional attachment to pharmacy. (sorry, the law of economics do not care about emotions)

2) They will deny that saturation is really that big of a deal or claim that it is an outright myth. Might cite "retiring pharmacists," "provider status," that "industry is growing," or that they might claim that we're just trying to discourage them from becoming future competition for jobs.

3) They will deny that they themselves will be affected by saturation. They promise to make themselves stand out through their own hard work and talent, that they will move anywhere in the country, etc.
 
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Even if you do manage to land a job, a lot of the floaters I know are getting well under 30 hours of work each week yet graduated recently from expensive private universities. This is not to include that most of the chains cut starting pay by $5-10 an hour. I wonder how they will be able to pay their loans off.

Many students who I knew to be very smart, hardworking and competitive were not even able to land an interview for residencies and fellowships. These are generally a requirement if you want to get into hospital, industry, or other non-retail areas in general.

It doesn't matter how great you think you are or how well your circumstances favor you. No one is safe from saturation. You're taking a huge gamble of $200k+ in student loans for a low return.
 
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nafcillin said:
can anyone help but wonder what the future holds for the current pharnacy students? Tons of debt and no jobs. I would be so depressed under the weight of student loans. I wish I could tell them to wake the **** up and get out
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Students who pursue pharmacy for the right reasons won't have trouble getting jobs.

Jobs go to those with the highest caliber talent.

People who get into this profession for the pay will become jaded the quickest.

There are so many other ways to make a buck.



Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using SDN mobile
 
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Mr. Corporate Pharmacist said:
Students who pursue pharmacy for the right reasons won't have trouble getting jobs.
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The "right reasons" typically being that you're willing to sacrifice your health, license and patient safety for lower pay so that you can make CVS and WBA, possibly soon AMZN shareholders richer. You also need to be willing to pack your bags and move just about anywhere in the country where you are needed.

Any other reasons and you'll probably be jaded.

Mr. Corporate Pharmacist said:
There are so many other ways to make a buck.
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Definitely agree with you there.
 
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nafcillin said:
not as in age but working for one company for more than 8-10 years. Are these pharmacists going to feel the burn of saturation? Anyone feel they are getting forced out or demoted? Or is it relatively stable

Question is for hospital pharmacists and retail
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Well, it's hard to do something for that many years that you don't truly "love" without getting bored or burned out and wanting to try something different, so the "burn" is that nothing different is out there due to saturation, and very difficult to relocate if one wants to. In addition, switching jobs nowadays often results in a pay cut, as the pay for new hires often does not consider experience. However, I have heard that in retail, everyone including senior pharmacists are getting their hours cut in some chains.
 
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Yes. These chains cut every $10 tech hour possible. You think they want to pay someone $70+/hr vs $50/hr for 2080 hours per year?

Walgreens and CVS already had mass layoffs when they closed 24 hr stores a few years back. Rphs with 15-20 years loyalty were let go with crappy severance packages.
 
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