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Who’s Who - The $200k Club

Earning more than $200k is an elusive benchmark for pharmacists. Some might even believe it to be impossible. In this month’s edition, Pharmacist Compensation looked at the data from the 2024 Annual Report to identify those lucky pharmacists earning $200k or more. The analysis focused on the Top 6 areas of pharmacy based on number of respondents. The Top 6 included a total of 2,237 full-time pharmacists.

One portion of the Pharmacist Compensation survey requests pharmacists to report their total annual wages. This is defined as a summation of salary plus any overtime/differential pay and any bonuses. The box plot below displays the full range of reported annual wages (thin blue line) for each area of pharmacy. The rectangle boxes represent the middle 50% of pharmacists with the middle of the box being the median. Only two areas of pharmacy, Managed Care/PBM and Industry/Pharma, had a median at $150k or above. Industry/Pharm had the highest median at $195,025.

The most commonly reported range of annual wages was $130k-139k. More than 70% of participants from the top 6 areas of pharmacy reported less than $160k. However, 164 participants (7.33%) reported their earnings to be $200k or more.

No surprise for long-term subscribers, pharmacists from Industry/Pharma were the majority (34.8%) of the 164 participants reporting annual wages of $200k+. The more surprising stat is 46.7% of all Industry/Pharma participants (122 total) reported annual wages of $200k+.

Bonus data - The $200k level is amazing but who are the top 1%?

Out of the 2,237 pharmacist from the Top 6 areas of pharmacy, 21 pharmacists (0.94%) reported annual earnings of $300k or more. I bet you could guess at least one of the areas of pharmacy represented. The overwhelming majority (19 pharmacists, 90.9%) were Industry/Pharma followed by Managed Care/PBM (1) and Specialty/Specialty Mail Order (1).

It is clear that earning $200k is not easy or the norm in our profession. However, with more than 7% earning above $200k, the data shows it is very much possible. There is no reason you can’t be next.

_{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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