Occupation / job
Pharmacy Technicians
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
$45,750 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint puts Pharmacy Technicians $355 a month below the middle of the American labour market — close enough that the spread below matters more to your outcome than the headline does.
This is a large occupation: 471,680 people work as Pharmacy Technicians. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
Health technologist roles suit people who want clinical responsibility with a defined scope — a real technical skill, exercised on patients, without the open-ended liability of the diagnosing role.
No verified preparation time is on file for Pharmacy Technicians. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Pharmacy Technicians earn under $37,850 and a quarter over $49,990: 1.3x, and $12,140 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
A quarter of the field earns under $37,850 — $12,170 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if shift work in a clinical setting would not be sustainable for you over a full career.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 471,680 figure counts people already working as Pharmacy Technicians, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Pharmacy Technicians is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $37,850 and $49,990 is the whole of the negotiation.
In cash terms the middle half of Pharmacy Technicians runs $37,850 to $49,990 — $12,140 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $45,750.
The 75th percentile is $49,990. Reaching it from the $45,750 midpoint is $4,240 a year; reaching it from the $37,850 that the bottom quarter of Pharmacy Technicians earn is $12,140.
The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $7,900 above the $37,850 bottom quarter but only $4,240 below the $49,990 top quarter. Most of the distance in Pharmacy Technicians is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $18.19 at the bottom quarter, $21.99 at the midpoint, $24.03 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Pharmacy Technicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $45,750 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Pharmacy Technicians, the hourly figure is $45,750 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else