The problem with the pharmacist job market is that it's so saturated it's literally impossible to find a job in certain regions/states, even for applicants who have completed a residency and/or who have previous pharmacist work experience. For example, hospitals are receiving literally 40+ applications for pharmacist positions posted for hospitals in medium-sized cities (not even large metropolitan cities). So in other words, it's not necessarily a case of voluntarily choosing to pursue something else besides pharmacy -- it's moreso the case that many pharmacy school graduates will have no choice but to do so, simply because there aren't nearly enough jobs to accommodate the 15,000 - 16,000 graduates being pumped out by schools every year.
I wonder just how saturated the PA job market is? Whenever I do a job search on Indeed.com for PA jobs in large, desirable cities, it seems like there are at least 3-4 pages worth of job openings, but it could be the case that only experienced PA's are being considered for those positions.
It’s like that now? If it is, then I would suggest that no, it’s not that bad for PAs and NPs yet.
Physicians are still in demand, and are considered a good investment. Facilities can get a lot out of a doctor that is hired on staff. I’ve noticed that everyone really wants to hire doctors, they just would love them to be a cheaper option (as you would expect any employer to wish). The bottleneck is physician residency positions. So that helps keep salaries reasonably high, which is great because I think they put in enough time into their training to deserve a large piece of the pie.
PAs and NPs don’t really have quite the same bottleneck, and could end up like pharmacy because of that. As it is now, I think there are jobs for everyone looking, and certainly for everyone that is a good hire that networks properly. But where you used to see a greater ability to be picky, the market is forcing folks to look further off the beaten path to find jobs. What I haven’t seen yet is what you seemed to suggest, which is that there is a significant number of people forced to search outside of their chosen career role in order to find work. That’s pretty bad if that happens, and usually you don’t see that until wages have totally tanked. I think we are just at the phase where poor job candidates are being filtered out in favor of the ones folks think will do well.
I guess the concern for you is what the landscape will be like in 3 or 4 years when you would be hitting the job market. My gut says you’d find work, but the wages would be such that the debt you would have accrued would be unmanageable on the typical wages. Apart from outliers, I feel that pay is going down. Where I’ve seen other industries salaries heading up over time, I’m conversely seeing PAs and FNPs still excited to take jobs that pay $100,000, which essentially means that pay isn’t keeping up with inflation. $100,000 ten years ago is like $120,000 today. I recently read a few threads online where folks were flashing high new grad salaries around, and quite a few of us were perplexed by them, feeling they were outliers or wages based in uniquely high COL locales, which the mostly were. But $106,000 a year doesn’t go as far as it used to. I’ve seen PAs Try to make the case that few jobs are awesome enough to have 100,000 starting wages, and while that is true, I’d argue that there is a narrow range of pay that typical PAs and NPs operate in, which seems to be static year to year, and is within that $100k to $120k sweet spot, year after year. Meanwhile, I see jobs that aren’t as demanding creeping up, as well as demanding jobs as nurses, police officers, engineers, etc moving into that $100,000 range (or close enough to it that you have to wonder if expensive school is worth it). With inflation, raises, and improved productivity, you’d expect the PA that started at $90k to be making $130k ish plus at around ten years after starting, but I’m not seeing that. Salaries seem to have stayed the same, and the market has gotten tighter.
So anyway, stuff to consider. I think before I took my pharmacy degree to PA school and spent $100k on tuition, and $70k on living expenses for two years, and added that to my existing debt, I’d try pharmaceutical sales, or just about anything else. The alternative is becoming a PA and being forced to work in a fast-paced-but-lucrative job to pay off your debt, and that’s just another kind of bondage. Believe me, I know PAs and FNPs that make really good money for the field, and they are like a hamster on a wheel. They work overtime and are excited to make $180k, and it consumes them. I’d rather live on $110k and have a life outside of work.
