$18/hr? With that kind of shift differential I would quit my informatics job and take an overnight position in a heartbeat. I don't remember the exact number, but I think I got $5/hr as an overnight differential in my old job.
Anyway, with regard to that DOP recommendation.. just remember in mind that most people out there aren't keeping up with the latest state of things. Your average person isn't constantly researching this stuff and obsessing about it, that's more common with us insane internet people. NMT is a great job and I would encourage someone to follow that path, but I have zero knowledge of the job market. I'm just as ignorant about it as the average person is about pharmacy. That DOP probably recommends the pharmacy field to his family because they haven't been looking for an entry level position in quite some time, and they probably don't realize how expensive it is now either.
As an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if healthcare as a whole enters into a steep decline. Healthcare has been the big field for high paying jobs for the past few decades, and it seems like every position is slowly becoming saturated. There may come a time soon when we all wish we had studied computer science.
@gwarm01 @PharmDBro2017 Actually, the point I was making was the the DOP is advising others to NOT go to pharmacy school. They didn't recommend the NMT career to me because of its association with pharmacy; they just recommended because the pay is decent and because it seem like it offers a better ROI than pharmacy. So the point I was trying to make is that even pharmacists who haven't had to look for jobs since the early 1980s are advising people -- even those who are already enrolled in pharmacy school -- to pursue something else.
Anyways, I mention that because I have decided to become an NMT (again, I'm AA all the way), just like I didn't mention the rad tech field because I'm actually pursuing that. Ironically enough, the DOP, who doesn't know that I was previously enrolled in AA school, advised me to look into "PA anesthetist" (which is what a lot of people in the southeast refer to AAs as) programs. Their daughter graduated from HS recently, and they want her to do nursing school with the goal of becoming a CRNA. Again, nobody around here is advising anyone to pursue pharmacy.
BTW, regarding the $18/hour shift differential for the overnight hospital pharmacist job that was posted last year, I specifically remember you saying that an $18/hour SD was "pretty great." That's what I mean... when I made the ill-fated decision to go to pharmacy school, the job market was GREAT here, but within 6 months of me matriculating into pharmacy school, it became totally saturated. But I acknowledge that starting pharmacy school was my mistake.
In response to your last point, I don't think that all healthcare fields are going to enter a steep decline. I think that physicians and NPs/PAs/CRNAs will always do better than pharmacists, even when their job markets become relatively saturated, simply because they can perform basic health assessments and interventions and bill the insurance companies for those services (I.e., they can do "doctor work"). I think that's something that is going to ensure that pharmacists are never able to claw their way out of the hole they're digging for themselves -- the market seems to desire more healthcare professionals who can work as "providers" in the sense I just described, and that's something that pharmacists will never have. I don't mean literally in terms of having provider status, but in terms of having the ability to do a basic health assessment, provide a diagnosis, perform treatment, and write a prescription. I know that lots of people will insist that pharmacists should focus on performing their traditional dispensing duties and "own" that, but what's ironic (and sad) is that the market for that is shrinking as well (closings, mergers, etc.). There is just no future in this field, at least not for me.
