I just graduated a few months ago. Large metropolitan area in North Texas. We are the 2nd graduating class from my school.
Here's the situation here. Non-residency outlook only. About half of our residency applicants matched.
The market is tight. Walmart hardly offered anyone in the graduating class, even some of their top interns had to jump ship. I've just heard now from a contact now that they are only offering at $50 an hour for new graduates in this area from this point forward. Kroger, of course, hired nobody and just did a major cut. A few floaters hired for Tom Thumb/Albertson's. I think about five people hired for Walgreens, but it's a 30 hours max/floater-type thing. A select few hired directly into hospital after excelling at a small hospital rotation. CVS hired about 10 people from my graduating class in the area. However, they had about 20 interns in my class. They got to pick and choose. I think about 35-40% of my class is still searching. Overall, not too bad at this point in time. The scary thing is there are there are multiple graduating classes stacking up behind us and multiple new schools opening up in the state.
I'm thankful to have stayed with CVS throughout school. I did not match for a residency so I'm thankful to have a job in my home market. Absolutely thankful that I turned down both HEB and Walmart during school. However, I just don't see a good long-term outlook. Retail pharmacy is a shrinking field. The downward pressure on both hours and wages is increasingly palpable. And this right now, before Amazon has gotten into the field.
The crazy thing is, I actually enjoy retail pharmacy. I'm fast, I run ****, and I excel at it. But even for a person like me, my only focus is to pay off my loans as quickly as possible and to figure out how to position myself so as to have a second career in ten years. Again, retail pharmacy is a shrinking field. Time will determine if I will regret going to pharmacy school. If I can get ten years of 6-figure income, it will have been worth it.
Would I get into pharmacy right now, the way the market is trending? Absolutely not. I'm seeing some top interns go without offers. I've seen some very qualified residency applicants go without matching.
There are simply too many students coming out. And technology will continue to shrink the field, especially in the major reservoir of jobs that is retail. It's only going to get worse and worse.
