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Today’s Insights

California: The Gold Medal of Salaries or Just a Strong Contender?

TL;DR - Our analysis of 2,900 pharmacists found that while California boasts higher than average salaries, its impact on the overall compensation picture is minimal.

The screenshot above is a recent example of a fairly common inquiry about whether the state of California skews the Pharmacist Compensation data. After years of making ASSumptions, I decided to re-examine the data and report the findings.

The charts and data points in this newsletter were generated using 2023 data reported from 2,900 pharmacists. (By the way - what did you think of the 2023 Annual report?)

First, to give a high level snapshot, the data was separated by region of the US. The median total wages for US pharmacists was $138,000. Pharmacists in the west region, which includes California, reported a median total wages of $150,000.

Undoubtedly, California does impact the west regional data. After all, it is the most populated state in the US with the 5th largest economy in the world. However, the west region also includes the number 2 (Oregon) and number 4 (Washington) highest earning states.

Next, the data was re-examined with California excluded. Surprisingly, the median total wages for the United States was minimally impacted. Removing California from the data set reduced the median by $2k, resulting to a new median of $136,000.

In my opinion, the $2k difference on an annual basis is insignificant for pharmacists. Therefore, the answer to the original question is - no California does not significantly skew the data. Pharmacist Compensation reports the median total wages because it is a better reflection of the typical pharmacist earner.

_{Pharmacist Compensation provided the data displayed in the above charts. Join thousands of pharmacists and take the anonymous survey. All participants receive access to an interactive dashboard that can be filtered by Job Title, Company, Area of Pharmacy, and more.}

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