More U.S. pharmacists are working past retirement age to lessen the impact of the bad economy on their families, according to a new workforce report, although job opportunities are still expanding.
The current report’s findings also reveal that more women are entering the pharmacy profession. Female practicing pharmacists have increased significantly, comprising 46 percent of the workforce in 2009, up from 31 percent in 1990.
This news comes as the pharmacy profession in general is aging. Thirty-seven percent of pharmacists were over age 55 in 2009, compared to 30 percent in 2004 and only 21 percent in 2000.
“While effects of the 2008/2009 economic recession were detected in this study for some work settings, the results showed that pharmacists continued to be in high demand overall,” said Jon C. Schommer, the study’s principal investigator, and professor and associate department head at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy. “We propose that the pharmacy profession currently has, and will continue to build, capacity for contributing to the reforming healthcare system to meet patient care needs that are rooted in improving the effectiveness, safety and value of medication therapy.”
Between 2000, 2004 and 2009, the proportion of pharmacists working full-time decreased from 73 percent to 68 percent to 67 percent, respectively, while those working part-time increased from 14 percent to 17 percent to 20 percent.
The study suggests that the trend of part-time work is increasing for both men and women pharmacists. Twenty-nine percent of women worked part-time in 2009, up from 26 percent in 2004 and 23 percent in 2000. More men are also working part-time as the proportion increased from 11 percent to 15 percent to 18 percent for the years 2000, 2004 and 2009, respectively.
Schommer said the decrease in full-time hours suggests that employers may have been forced to reduce staffing levels due to the recession. Supporting this, 68 percent of pharmacists rated their workload level at their place of practice as high or excessively high, which is an increase of 14 percentage points compared to 2004.
The age distribution of actively practicing pharmacists varies tremendously between men and women, Schommer noted. Forty-eight percent of practicing male pharmacists are greater than 46 years of age and 30 percent are older than 60. Nearly half of active female pharmacists are between the ages of 31 and 45 while 40 percent are between 46 and 60 and only 4 percent are older than 60.
Thus, the future face of pharmacy appears to be female.
Other trends revealed in the 2009 survey include shifts in the pharmacy profession toward more patient care and an increase in “novel roles.”
Pharmacists practicing in community pharmacy settings (independent, chain, mass merchandiser or supermarket pharmacies), devoted at least 70 percent of their time to medication dispensing. Hospital and other patient care pharmacists devoted less than half their time to medication dispensing and each of these pharmacist categories devoted 27 percent of their time to patient care on average.
Schommer said pharmacists in every practice setting, indicated that they would like to spend less time in medication dispensing and business/organization management and more time in patient care services, education and research activities.
The 2009 National Pharmacist Workforce Survey is the third in a series of surveys commissioned by the Pharmacy Manpower Project, Inc. since 2000. The 2009 survey includes data collected from a random sample of 3,000 individuals selected from a list of 249,381 licensed pharmacists in the U.S. Response rate to the survey was 52 percent.