Pharmacists Earn $136,000 But Rank Last For Job Satisfaction Among Six-Figure Careers
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The $136,030 salary in the title is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2023 median for pharmacists, while Career.io’s 2024 employer-review analysis rated the occupation 2.97 out of 5 and placed it last among the “high-paid” jobs examined.
The BLS May 2025 median has since risen to $140,910, and the Pharmacy Workforce Center-funded 2024 National Pharmacist Workforce Study found 69.4% of practicing respondents somewhat or very satisfied with their jobs. Practice setting changes the picture: community pharmacists reported substantially lower satisfaction than those in hospitals, clinics and other settings, while current BLS data show lower pay at pharmacies and drug retailers than at other major employers.
The Last-Place Ranking Has A Narrow Base
Career.io says it examined 755,758 Glassdoor reviews after using BLS data to identify three occupational groups, including the 50 with the highest average annual salaries, then found as many as 40 large U.S. employers per role and averaged available ratings.
This employer-review ranking is not a probability-based national survey, and the published methodology gives no pharmacist-specific review count, margin of error or test showing whether occupational differences were statistically meaningful.
It also was not strictly a ranking of six-figure careers. Career.io’s lowest-rated “high-paid” group included secondary school teachers, special education teachers and therapists alongside pharmacists, veterinarians and human resources managers.
Elsewhere, Career.io included pharmacists among dissatisfied jobs that do not require a degree, although the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says pharmacists typically need a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and must be licensed in every state. The analysis therefore captures negative online reviews, particularly at large employers, without establishing that pharmacists nationwide are less satisfied than every other highly paid professional.
Practice Setting Divides Satisfaction And Pay
The 2024 National Pharmacist Workforce Study, funded by the Pharmacy Workforce Center and conducted by university researchers, used a cross-sectional online survey of a systematic random sample of 198,000 licensed U.S. pharmacists. It received 5,110 usable responses, and its 2.7% response rate creates a substantial risk of nonresponse bias.
Among 2,802 actively practicing pharmacists who answered the job-satisfaction question, 61% of community pharmacists were somewhat or very satisfied. The same study reported 79.5% among hospital and health-system pharmacists, 81.7% in ambulatory care and 83.2% in a mixed “other” category covering industry, managed care, academia, government and specialized settings.
The survey cannot rank pharmacists against data scientists, lawyers or other high earners, but it shows a satisfaction gap exceeding 20 percentage points between community practice and several other settings.
In its August 27, 2026 update, the BLS reported May 2025 pharmacist medians of $132,940 at pharmacies and drug retailers, $157,290 at hospitals and $153,920 in ambulatory health-care services. The BLS profession-wide median of $140,910 consequently describes neither retail nor hospital pharmacy particularly well.
Workload Concentrates In Chain Pharmacies
Among 1,829 full-time pharmacist respondents in its workload table, the Pharmacy Workforce Center’s 2024 data show 73% rated their workload as high or excessively high.
Those data found rates of 91% among chain pharmacists and 88% among mass-merchandiser pharmacists, compared with 55% at independent pharmacies, 66% in hospitals and health systems, and 62% in ambulatory care. The study also found that 68.2% of community pharmacists often, very often or always felt fatigued, while 63.4% experienced anxiety with the same frequency, both higher than in every other broad setting examined.
These results align with a 2024 narrative review in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, which identified workload, pharmacy type and stress as recurring contributors to burnout among U.S. community pharmacists. Because it was a narrative review rather than a meta-analysis, and the underlying studies used inconsistent definitions of well-being, its authors called for more standardized research instead of presenting a definitive national burnout rate.
Meaningful work remains an important counterweight. The Pharmacy Workforce Center’s 2024 survey found 89.6% of practicing respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that their work served a greater purpose, while 88.4% agreed it was meaningful to them. High purpose and high strain can coexist when pharmacists value patient care but have limited control over staffing, prescription volume and corporate performance demands.
The Career Decision Depends On The Setting
The BLS May 2025 pharmacist median of $140,910 was nearly three times the agency’s $50,980 median for all U.S. occupations, but the commercial last-place label does not establish a representative comparison limited to six-figure careers.
For prospective pharmacists, employer and practice setting deserve closer attention than either profession-wide figure. The evidence points to large-chain community work as the area requiring the closest scrutiny of staffing, autonomy and workload, while hospital and ambulatory roles carried higher median pay and satisfaction in the cited sources.
