---
title: "Pharmacy Aide"
description: "Record drugs delivered to the pharmacy, store incoming merchandise, and inform the supervisor of stock needs. May operate cash register and accept…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/pharmacy-aide"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Pharmacy Aide

**Category:** Healthcare Support · **SOC code:** 31-9095 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 31-9095.00

Record drugs delivered to the pharmacy, store incoming merchandise, and inform the supervisor of stock needs. May operate cash register and accept prescriptions for filling.

Also advertised as: Certified Pharmacist Assistant; Front Counter Clerk; Pharmacist Assistant; Pharmacy Ancillary; Pharmacy Assistant; Pharmacy Care Rep (Pharmacy Care Representative); Pharmacy Cashier; Pharmacy Clerk.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $37,680 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $18.12/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $29,820 to $56,010, with the middle half between $34,980 and $43,640
- **Total US employment:** 39,530
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -0.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 38/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 39,530 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $29,820 |
| 25th | $34,980 |
| 50th (median) | $37,680 |
| 75th | $43,640 |
| 90th | $56,010 |
| Mean (average) | $40,450 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $59,960 | $54,558 | 120 |
| UT | $51,600 | $52,193 | 250 |
| HI | $46,250 | $42,064 | 110 |
| WA | $45,110 | $42,154 | 1,990 |
| AZ | $43,360 | $43,068 | 810 |
| CA | $42,200 | $38,114 | 8,440 |
| OR | $40,250 | $38,941 | 450 |
| PA | $39,470 | $40,452 | 1,210 |
| NV | $39,080 | $39,088 | 410 |
| TX | $38,630 | $39,801 | 2,900 |
| DE | $38,500 | $38,574 | 130 |
| ME | $38,060 | $39,217 | 150 |
| NY | $38,040 | $35,248 | 2,360 |
| RI | $38,020 | $37,172 | Not published by BLS |
| MO | $37,820 | $41,644 | 650 |

34 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 49 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/pharmacy-aide/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/pharmacy-aide.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 39,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 39,000 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 300 jobs, or -0.7%. Declining: -0.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 61.2% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 18.2% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 15.0% |
| Some College Courses | 5.6% |

## What the work involves

- Maintain and clean equipment, work areas, or shelves.
- Receive, store, and inventory pharmaceutical supplies or medications, check for out-of-date medications, and notify pharmacist when inventory levels are low.
- Prepare, maintain, and record records of inventories, receipts, purchases, or deliveries, using a variety of computer screen formats.
- Prepare prescription labels by typing or operating a computer and printer.
- Answer telephone inquiries, referring callers to pharmacist when necessary.
- Unpack, sort, count, and label incoming merchandise, including items requiring special handling or refrigeration.
- Restock storage areas, replenishing items on shelves.
- Accept prescriptions for filling, gathering and processing necessary information.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 2.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 6.79 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.84 |
| R — Realistic | 3.75 |
| S — Social | 3.11 |
| I — Investigative | 1.57 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 87.3 |
| ISFJ | 82.9 |
| ESFJ | 81.0 |
| ISTJ | 80.8 |
| ESTP | 54.8 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Pharmacy Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pharmacy-technician) — median $45,750
- [Cashier](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cashier) — median $32,880
- [Medical Secretary and Administrative Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-secretary-and-administrative-assistant) — median $45,930
- [Medical Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-assistant) — median $45,690
- [Stocker and Order Filler](https://nuecareer.com/careers/stocker-and-order-filler) — median $37,330
- [Receptionist and Information Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/receptionist-and-information-clerk) — median $38,010
- [Optician, Dispensing](https://nuecareer.com/careers/optician-dispensing) — median $47,260
- [Veterinary Assistant and Laboratory Animal Caretaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/veterinary-assistant-and-laboratory-animal-caretaker) — median $38,150
- [Phlebotomist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/phlebotomist) — median $45,230
- [Medical Equipment Preparer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-equipment-preparer) — median $47,700

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/pharmacy-aide