Pharmacist
Also known as: PharmD, Clinical Pharmacist, Retail Pharmacist
Dispense medications, advise patients on drug interactions, and play a key role in community health.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for pharmacists.
About 1 in 833 reaches this level
About 325,200 pharmacists in the US (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 29-1051, 2025); VP of Pharmacy Operations at ~$295K exists at maybe 300-500 major health systems (~0.12%). Entry reflects new-PharmD offers near the BLS 10th percentile (~$99K, BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a doctoral/professional degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
The four-year PharmD itself, on top of at least two years of college (about a third of applicants arrive with a full bachelor's, and some schools admit straight from high school into a six-year programme), costs about $111,000 at a public school in your own state and $186,000 at a private one; public out-of-state sits near $172,000. Living costs are not included. A few schools run an accelerated three-year version, which cuts a year of tuition. Cost-to-salaryEntry ratio is 1.5x against our $95,000 entry salary - low for a doctorate, because pharmacists start near six figures.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Pharmacists check and hand out prescriptions, catch dangerous drug combinations, and advise patients and doctors about medicines. Two kinds of automation reach this work. Robots already fill a lot of prescriptions: Walgreens told CNBC in 2025 that its robotic central-fill centers handled 40% of the prescription volume, on average, at the stores they supplied, and it aimed to supply more than 5,000 stores by the end of that year. And much of the rest of the job is looking up, checking and explaining information, which AI chatbots are good at. A 2025 Microsoft Research study that measured how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with put pharmacists 119th of 785 jobs, in the top sixth and level with software developers. Under our rubric that is a meaningful share of the work, so this is not a 1 or a 2.
We used to rate this a 4 (High). The evidence we could actually find does not support that, so we lowered it to 3. BLS projects pharmacist jobs to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all jobs, with about 12,500 openings a year. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projects a shortage of 30,400 pharmacists in 2038. The pressure is real, but it sits in one setting. BLS expects demand to grow in hospitals and clinics, where pharmacists work on medical teams managing patients' medicines, and to be limited in retail drugstores as chains consolidate and more people get prescriptions by mail. Walgreens and CVS are closing hundreds of stores, while Walgreens says its robots are there to give pharmacists more time with patients.
What would change this score. If drugstore chains start cutting pharmacist positions or hours as robots and AI checking tools spread, or new graduates struggle to find jobs despite the shortage projection, it goes back to 4. If hospital and clinic jobs keep absorbing new graduates, it could drop to 2. Inside the field, clinical work in hospitals and clinics is the safer ground than retail dispensing.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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