The HIRING FREEZE!!!

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But that being said.... we're always looking for highly qualified DOP and Clinical Managers!!
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I crunched some of the numbers from the bureau of labor statistics and bureau of health professions statistics pages and found that the estimated demand for pharmacists is likely to include around 5,500-6,000 new jobs a year based on expanded markets (from economic data) in the next 5 years, and around 4,000-5,000 pharmacists retiring each year (based on a survey they did last year). One thing that was not taken into account was the impact of pharmacists delaying their retirement, and the increasing number of women.

Obviously the economy has encountered a slowdown which would likely delay business growth for a few years, also pharmacists will not be retiring as quickly due to bad stock markets.

After looking at the #s, I agree there is probably no classic shortage (recanting my earlier position) (just do a google search pharmacist supply). Will the existing supply of "shortage" jobs tide people over along with meager retirement and expansion? I bet it gets harder to get a job in the next few years, perhaps even leading to a sizeable oversupply. However, the old timers gotta retire sometime, and come 2012-2013 when the economy is recovering, it's going to have to make up for 3-4 years of lagging behind the increasing prescription demand. I mean, the rate of prescription increase has been at 5%/year average for the past decade, and that wasnt even taking into consideration the baby boomers. The oldest baby boomers arent turning 65 for at least several years yet. After that, there's going to be a hell of a lot of polypharmacy for everyone to deal with.

In the end, maybe people will be relieved because it never came down to truly devastating pharmacist shortage which would have certainly opened the door to tech verification etc etc.

Just my other 2 cents. I jumped the gun with my comments earlier i guess.

Also, zyvox: Harry Dent's ideas are interesting, and I agree with a lot of them, but Im not sure how much trust I would place in his actual market predictions. Big economic theorists are a dime a dozen in a recession but it seems like he has a decent head on his shoulders w regard to the very long term.
 
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I am the real Zyvox!
 
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ItsOverZyvox said:
But that being said.... we're always looking for highly qualified DOP and Clinical Managers!!
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now what do you mean by clinical managers?

like the ones that send your MUEs out all over the ASHP listservs?
 
njac said:
now what do you mean by clinical managers?

like the ones that send your MUEs out all over the ASHP listservs?
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No one better be sending my MUEs all over the listservs.
 
Well young Ross... it takes a real man to say what you just did here.
Good Job.


Ross434 said:
I crunched some of the numbers from the bureau of labor statistics and bureau of health professions statistics pages and found that the estimated demand for pharmacists is likely to include around 5,500-6,000 new jobs a year based on expanded markets (from economic data) in the next 5 years, and around 4,000-5,000 pharmacists retiring each year (based on a survey they did last year). One thing that was not taken into account was the impact of pharmacists delaying their retirement, and the increasing number of women.

Obviously the economy has encountered a slowdown which would likely delay business growth for a few years, also pharmacists will not be retiring as quickly due to bad stock markets.

After looking at the #s, I agree there is probably no classic shortage (recanting my earlier position) (just do a google search pharmacist supply). Will the existing supply of "shortage" jobs tide people over along with meager retirement and expansion? I bet it gets harder to get a job in the next few years, perhaps even leading to a sizeable oversupply. However, the old timers gotta retire sometime, and come 2012-2013 when the economy is recovering, it's going to have to make up for 3-4 years of lagging behind the increasing prescription demand. I mean, the rate of prescription increase has been at 5%/year average for the past decade, and that wasnt even taking into consideration the baby boomers. The oldest baby boomers arent turning 65 for at least several years yet. After that, there's going to be a hell of a lot of polypharmacy for everyone to deal with.

In the end, maybe people will be relieved because it never came down to truly devastating pharmacist shortage which would have certainly opened the door to tech verification etc etc.

Just my other 2 cents. I jumped the gun with my comments earlier i guess.

Also, zyvox: Harry Dent's ideas are interesting, and I agree with a lot of them, but Im not sure how much trust I would place in his actual market predictions. Big economic theorists are a dime a dozen in a recession but it seems like he has a decent head on his shoulders w regard to the very long term.
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What would it take to shut down schools like dentistry did in the 90s? Just in case administrators get greedy and turn the PharmD into the next JD....
 
JeremyE30 said:
What would it take to shut down schools like dentistry did in the 90s? Just in case administrators get greedy and turn the PharmD into the next JD....
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Lobbying from pharmacist and pharmacy students. Start publishing articles and spreading propaganda/exaggerated story about the predicted surplus of pharmacist like they did for the shortage so that those new schools won't be able to claim the shortage as an excuse to open up the school. No one gonna "officially" talk about surplus until it is happening everywhere. maybe... I am just a pharmacy student.. have no idea how the pharmacy job market is .. I just based my opinion on # of schools and the claimed shortage.
 
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JeremyE30 said:
What would it take to shut down schools like dentistry did in the 90s? Just in case administrators get greedy and turn the PharmD into the next JD....
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I don't think it is possible to shut down any new schools. I believe that ACPE's stance is that as long as a school meets its requirements, it will give it accreditation. They have no desire to limit new schools.
 
I find it ironic how the ones, who are going or went to a no name pharmacy school, are complaining about new pharmacy schools.

If you want to limit the number of pharmacists, just make the board harder. Like in California, 30% of out of state students and foreigh graduates do not pass the California's board exam.
 
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ItsOverZyvox said:
Young Ross,

This isn't a gloom and doom. The points you make are legit.. female dominated profession, aging boomers etc. However, there are reasons why everyone, not just pharmacists should be concerned.

  • We're heading into the economic depression worse than the great depression of 1929 and the recovery will be a long term.. 2020+
  • The economic boom rides the wave of series of bubbles, stock market, real estate, and commodities. Unfortunately..all those 3 bubbles converged and peaked at the same time and if you profitted from it, good for you. But if not, they're in the process of bursting right now and this trend will likely to continue until 2012 to 2013. Some predict Dow will go below 4,000 and real estate value to decline additional 40 to 50%.. good time to buy in 4 years.
  • Two major contributing factors to economic boom are demographics and technololgy.. this is especially important to pharmacy because technology dictates how we service our demographics. Major players in the pharmacy retail industry aren't messing around. You are going to see them get mean and lean in upcoming years. They're preparing to provide more service with less labor cost. And they will look to technology to accomplish this.. ie, mail order facility where 1 pharmacist cranking out thousands of verifications per day.
Just 10 years ago, there were about 70 pharmacy schools...now we have around 100 with more openings. Let me tell you about early to mid 90's. There weren't very many pharmacy jobs. We never heard of "sign on bonus" when I was coming out of pharmacy school. In 1995, the major retail player for our region was Savon Pharmacy. They took 13 from our class... Long's took about 5... Navy took 1 of us.. I think Walmart took 2 of us. On our graduation day, majority of my class didn't have a job lined up. 50 of us went into residency... many of them because there really weren't very many jobs and in order to get a hospital job, residency was almost required.

Then in 1996, Walgreens announced the expansion. And Pharmacy rode the Wag's expansion boom. This is what caused the pharmacist shortage.
The reason for this was for Wags to get into real estate market and to service upcoming baby boomer's prescription boom.

This is why it's important to studey and evaluate what Wags, CVS, and the big players are doing. They will cut labor cost. And the biggest labor cost? Pharmacist. And there is no doubt about it..hiring freeze is occuring everywhere I see. I'm seeing pharmacists float a lot more than before. I'm seeing floaters losing hours.

Now, how's Walgreen's expansion plan for the future? Will it keep the same pace as before? Even then, with additional PharmDs cranking out from 100+ schools, it's not realistic to expect the shortage of pharmacist will persist.

Here are counterpoints:

  • Boomers will take more drugs but many of those are maintenance drugs which will be filled by central fill station...and Boomer's script count peak will occur when they start to die off... and there will be less demand for prescriptions.
  • Female pharmacists only want part time work? You'd hope so...but if they're taking about $120,000+ student loans, I think they'll be working full time for a while.
My point? Watch Wags and CVS closely for their future plans. The pharmacist shortage as we knew is over.
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Very good post! Very experienced!:thumbup:
 
ItsOverZyvox said:
Young Ross,

Then in 1996, Walgreens announced the expansion. And Pharmacy rode the Wag's expansion boom. This is what caused the pharmacist shortage.
The reason for this was for Wags to get into real estate market and to service upcoming baby boomer's prescription boom.

This is why it's important to studey and evaluate what Wags, CVS, and the big players are doing. They will cut labor cost. And the biggest labor cost? Pharmacist. And there is no doubt about it..hiring freeze is occuring everywhere I see. I'm seeing pharmacists float a lot more than before. I'm seeing floaters losing hours.

Now, how's Walgreen's expansion plan for the future? Will it keep the same pace as before? Even then, with additional PharmDs cranking out from 100+ schools, it's not realistic to expect the shortage of pharmacist will persist.

My point? Watch Wags and CVS closely for their future plans. The pharmacist shortage as we knew is over.
Click to expand...


Walgreens has announced that they are slowing store growth from about 5-7 % per year down to 2-3 %. So instead of 400-500 new stores per year, it will 150-250. They have almost 7000 stores now. Their goal was 10000 stores by 2011, they have backed off of that number now.
 
rxdout said:
Walgreens has announced that they are slowing store growth from about 5-7 % per year down to 2-3 %. So instead of 400-500 new stores per year, it will 150-250. They have almost 7000 stores now. Their goal was 10000 stores by 2011, they have backed off of that number now.
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That's really too bad. In a way, I hate the way Wags and the rest of the mass retail pharmacy chains drove our market and the profession to open up additional 30 schools. Though I'm not very concerned about myself for future job opportunities for the next 20 years, I know the days of picking and choosing pharmacy jobs are coming to a slow end. The old saying "I can go anywhere in the country and get a job" may no longer apply to Pharmacy.
 
rxdout said:
Walgreens has announced that they are slowing store growth from about 5-7 % per year down to 2-3 %. So instead of 400-500 new stores per year, it will 150-250. They have almost 7000 stores now. Their goal was 10000 stores by 2011, they have backed off of that number now.
Click to expand...

Walgreens plans to open 495 new stores this year if their PR people arent just straight lying to us. At least, that was their plan last week. Of course things could change if it gets worse.. But if walgreens stops expanding. Give it a few years, there will be unmet demand out there and one of their competitors will pick up the slack.

edit: fiscal year 2009
 
In az I don't think there are many jobs left in retail... Just 6 months ago every week there would be an email with about 20 or more open shifts you can pick up the next week since the new grads signed there have been no emails and I have talked to a floater today who they can't find 40 hours of work for him. It will only get worse in august with more new grads. AZ used to always need help I didn't think it would be saturated this fast. I don't know if it is the same at wags but definitely CVS.
 
What about the expansion pharmacy in non-traditional other area such as managed care and home care infusion etc?

Since one of the goals in healthcare now is to discharge from hospitals people ASAP and treat them as outpatient/homecare patients to reduce cost. Will there be an increased demand in those areas like in nursing?
 
That is the sense that I get in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Hospitals are cutting hours, and are not hiring. It's getting saturated, and will be even more when the grads come out of school in June.

What a time to be getting out of school....
 
Ross434 said:
Walgreens plans to open 495 new stores this year if their PR people arent just straight lying to us. At least, that was their plan last week. Of course things could change if it gets worse.. But if walgreens stops expanding. Give it a few years, there will be unmet demand out there and one of their competitors will pick up the slack.

edit: fiscal year 2009
Click to expand...

Walgreen's fiscal year is August thru August. So yes, they will open about 500 stores in fiscal 2009. The slow down will be for 2010 and 2011. The company has publicly stated this many times. It was one of their major announcements at the last shareholders meeting.
 
blueclassring said:
That is the sense that I get in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Hospitals are cutting hours, and are not hiring. It's getting saturated, and will be even more when the grads come out of school in June.

What a time to be getting out of school....
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are they hiring their residents? (says someone with multiple residency interviews in Phoenix...)
 
No I meant hiring them on post residency
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Oooooooh. Ok.

If they aren't, I know of two hospitals in Pittsburgh that are after residency-trained clinical pharmacists right now...
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yeah but it snows in Pitt.

I've actually heard great things about the city. It's just that snow thing.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
They got snow plows these days...
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I hear people talk horror stories about having to get up 6am to clear the driveway of snow..only to have the snow plow come and stack the snow/ice pile against the driveway... That's no way to live.. to get up that early.
 
ItsOverZyvox said:
I hear people talk horror stories about having to get up 6am to clear the driveway of snow..only to have the snow plow come and stack the snow/ice pile against the driveway... That's no way to live.. to get up that early.
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Jesus...this ain't Buffalo. It doesn't snow that much. I've never cleared my driveway ever. I just wipe the snow off of the windshield, get in, and go. Ice is the only thing I really worry about...and being that they have salt trucks roaming the main highways 24/7 during a storm, once I get off of my road, I'm gold.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Jesus...this ain't Buffalo. It doesn't snow that much. I've never cleared my driveway ever. I just wipe the snow off of the windshield, get in, and go. Ice is the only thing I really worry about...and being that they have salt trucks roaming the main highways 24/7 during a storm, once I get off of my road, I'm gold.
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As far as I'm concerned, anything and anyone North East of Carolinas are yankees...y'all can freeze to death all I care! :smuggrin:
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Jesus...this ain't Buffalo. It doesn't snow that much. I've never cleared my driveway ever. I just wipe the snow off of the windshield, get in, and go. Ice is the only thing I really worry about...and being that they have salt trucks roaming the main highways 24/7 during a storm, once I get off of my road, I'm gold.
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One of my buddies is a snowplow driver. He plows in his own driveway along his route. :laugh: but we got 125" last year
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Jesus...this ain't Buffalo. It doesn't snow that much. I've never cleared my driveway ever. I just wipe the snow off of the windshield, get in, and go. Ice is the only thing I really worry about...and being that they have salt trucks roaming the main highways 24/7 during a storm, once I get off of my road, I'm gold.
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Buffalo is terrible. I've had maybe two snowfree days since spring semester started. And don't get me started on the wind that is somehow always in everybody's face.

This place kills a tiny bit of me every day.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Yeah...all the time. They have them in Fl? Wow...
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they got 2 of them...one in the ghetto of fort lauderdale and one on fort lauderdale beach...washing down one of their sandwiches with Iron Crappy Beer is most excellent
 
SpirivaSunrise said:
Oh, and Mikey...they only have those 2 outside of Pittsburgh. Nooo idea why they decided to open the two down here of all places.
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Duh, because all them snowbirds from up north Yankee land end up down in Florida.
 
Are they open 24 hours like the ones in Yinzertown? It's usually the only place I can go at 3AM after Dave & Buster's closes. That or Eat 'n Park...but I wouldn't make a convicted rapist eat that stuff...
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
Are they open 24 hours like the ones in Yinzertown? It's usually the only place I can go at 3AM after Dave & Buster's closes. That or Eat 'n Park...but I wouldn't make a convicted rapist eat that stuff...
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Yup! They're open 24/7. At least the one on the beach is....

I got the pastrami one...which do you usually get?
 
Do you know what we're talking about Z? The sandwich has fries...and cole slaw in it.

primantiyg6.jpg
 
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