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Job Market Showing Demand for Specialized Pharmacists

Anna Sharp
February 23, 2017 • 3 min read

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Although the job market for generalist pharmacists looks stagnant, there appears to be greater demand for specialized pharmacists with advanced qualifications like anticoagulation, oncology, and informatics.

This employment outlook comes from the first-ever Pharmacist Demand Indicator (PDI), which recently transitioned from the former Aggregate Demand Index (ADI) in order to establish a quarterly online data reporting cycle and to assess demand for different types of pharmacists, including staff/generalist, manager, and specialized pharmacists, according to a January 2017 status briefing from the Pharmacy Workforce Center (PWC).

Nevertheless, pharmacist job market demand is still estimated on the ADI’s 5-point rating scale—where a 5 means demand for pharmacists is high and it’s difficult to fill open pharmacist positions, and a 1 means demand for pharmacists is well below the available pharmacist supply. For the purpose of trend analysis, demand data for staff/generalist pharmacists is being linked to historic ADI data, which look like this:

Source: Aggregate Demand Index, pharmacymanpower.com

Based on the inaugural PDI results for the third quarter of 2016, demand for generalist/staff pharmacists nationally is currently in balance with the available pharmacist supply, while demand for managers is slightly higher, and demand for specialized pharmacists is even higher than it is for managers. This is also the case at the regional level, with the South showing the greatest demand for specialized pharmacists, and the West showing slight demand for generalist/staff pharmacists.

The full national and regional PDI results are shown in Table 1.

Source: Pharmacist Demand Index, aacp.org

Compared with previous ADI figures, the current national unweighted PDI reported for the third quarter ending September 2016 for generalist/staff pharmacists (3.00) is slightly higher than the last national ADI reported for March 2016 (2.94), but it falls below the national ADI reported for September 2015 (3.39), as well as October 2015 (3.43), November 2015 (2.96), December 2015 (3.09), and January 2016 (3.05). This suggests that job market demand for generalist/staff pharmacists has been either flat or slightly declining over the past year.

Of note, there is no historical job market data from PWC for managers and specialized pharmacists. In addition, the current PDI does not show state-specific results for managers and specialized pharmacists.

For generalist/staff pharmacists, however, Alaska holds the most promising outlook for pharmacist job openings, as it reported the highest state-specific PDI for the third quarter of 2016 (4.5)—the same ADI the state reported for March 2016. Meanwhile, Montana has seen a significant increase in demand for generalist/staff pharmacists, as the state reported a PDI of 4.00 for the third quarter of 2016, compared with an ADI of 3.25 for March 2016. On the other hand, Nevada has seen a significant decrease in demand for generalist/staff pharmacists, as the state reported a PDI of 1.00 for the third quarter of 2016, compared with an ADI of 2.5 for March 2016.

The full state-specific PDI results for generalist/staff pharmacists are shown in Table 2.

Source: Pharmacist Demand Index, aacp.org

PDI figures for generalist/staff pharmacists were also categorized by type of practice site, and the averages were higher for community settings (3.20) than institutional ones (2.88).

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), pharmacist employment is projected to grow only 3% from 2014 to 2024, which is slower than the average for all occupations. However, BLS projects that increased demand for prescription medications will lead to more demand for pharmaceutical services overall.

The PWC is currently working with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) to recruit additional PDI panelists from the pharmacy organizations’ memberships.

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