National Pharmacy Organizations Develop New Model to Measure and Report Pharmacist Job Demand in the United States

AACP Article

The tool will provide critical insights into pharmacy labor market patterns.


Contact: Maureen Thielemans, 703-739-2330 ext. 1022

Arlington, Va.—The Pharmacy Workforce Center, a nonprofit corporation comprised of nine national pharmacy professional organizations, announced the release of the Pharmacy Demand Report (PDR), a new tool that provides an enhanced measurement of pharmacist demand in the United States by utilizing artificial intelligence technology to analyze hundreds of millions of publicly available online job postings. 

Members of the pharmacy profession and other external stakeholders can follow and analyze trends for various career opportunities for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians on an individual state, region, and metropolitan area level. This enhanced report replaces the Pharmacy Demand Index, which was suspended in January 2019 due to inconsistencies with survey panelist participation. The PDR will be reported at the beginning of each calendar quarter.

“The launch of the PDR is especially important in light of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Allie Jo Shipman, president of the Pharmacy Workforce Center. “As pharmacists step up to provide much-needed services to their communities, including testing and immunizations, providing information and insight on the demand for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to the profession and other stakeholders is crucial.”

The PDR information is generated from a query from the Burning Glass Technologies’ Labor Insight™ Real-time Labor Market Information tool that includes all U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, the BGTOCC or specialized occupation, and certification (pharmacist license for pharmacist occupations). This real-time strategic intelligence offers crucial insights, such as which jobs are most in demand and where they are geographically located.

Pharmacist occupation data within the PDR is categorized as Pharmacist/Pharmacy Director and is defined by pharmacist-specialized occupation, which includes clinical pharmacist, hospital pharmacist, pharmacy director, retail pharmacist, and other pharmacist occupations* (including the compounding pharmacist, informatics pharmacist, infusion pharmacist, long-term care pharmacist, nuclear pharmacist and oncology pharmacist). Information is also provided for the Pharmacy Technician occupation.

Each of the pharmacist occupations and the pharmacy technician occupation will have the following information presented in the PDR, as reported for each quarter of the previous calendar year and each quarter of the current calendar year:

  • The number of job postings by United States region
  • The number of job postings by state
  • The number of job postings for the Top 25 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) for the occupation

The job Postings Quotient provided for each state helps compare demand for new pharmacist positions relative to the number of currently licensed pharmacists in that state. For example, Maine and Texas had a total of 52 and 971 open pharmacist positions, respectively, in 2019. However, their Postings Quotient is similar (22.77 and 20.73) because Maine’s licensed pharmacist population was 2,284 (as of October 2019) and in Texas it was 26,835. The Postings Quotient is generated by dividing the number of total job postings by the number of licensed pharmacists or pharmacy technicians reported for each state and multiplying by 1,000.

To learn more, read the full Pharmacy Demand Report. The next Pharmacy Demand Report will be available October 2020 and will include information for the first three quarters of 2020.

The Pharmacy Workforce Center (PWC), formerly known as the Pharmacy Manpower Project, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation comprised of major national pharmacy professional and trade organizations. Its mission is to serve the public and the pharmacy profession by developing data regarding the size and demography of the pharmacy workforce and conducting and supporting research in related areas.

*This is a PWC-generated category as the pharmacist job postings included were reported were very low numbers.