Retail pharmacies are closing, and the pharmacists who worked in them are leaving, too. Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and shuttered about 800 stores while CVS closed 900 locations beginning in 2021, and Walgreens announced plans to close 1,200 more starting in 2024 — a cumulative contraction that has left 46% of U.S. counties without a drugstore within 10 miles. Now the workforce is following the storefronts out the door, as retail pharmacist employment fell to its lowest level since 2010 in 2025, according to a June 23 Drug Channels analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Here are five notes from the report:
- Retail pharmacist employment declined by 8,200 positions in 2025. As of May 2025, 162,000 pharmacists worked in retail settings, including drugstores, independent pharmacies, supermarkets, convenience stores, mass merchants and mail pharmacies.
- The workforce is 14.2% smaller than its 2017 peak and 7.5% below the 2021 COVID-19 pandemic trough.
- Hospital pharmacist employment continued to grow, with hospitals employing 102,000 pharmacists in 2025 and adding 3,000 positions during the year after adding more than 11,000 pharmacist jobs across 2023 and 2024.
- Pharmacists earned an average annual salary of $140,920 in 2025. Pharmacists in physician offices earned an annual average of $167,000, while hospital-employed pharmacists earned $151,000 on average.
- Retail pharmacists posted the strongest salary growth. Retail pharmacist salaries increased 3.2% from May 2024 to May 2025, compared with 2.2% growth for hospital pharmacists and 0.2% growth for pharmacists in physician offices. During the same period, the Consumer Price Index increased 2.4%.
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