Pharmacist Salary in Arkansas 2026,
$136,060 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $136,060 a year, or $65.41 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — only 3.4% below the national median of $140,910. The middle half falls between $130,260 and $154,540 and the full band runs $105,560 to $164,940. That narrow gap to the national figure is the headline: pharmacy is close to nationally priced, and Arkansas's low cost base makes the real position stronger than the nominal one.

Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers at $138,770, ahead of Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway $136,700, Hot Springs $135,200, and Fort Smith and Jonesboro both at $133,520. The whole table spans about five thousand dollars, so geography is close to irrelevant for pharmacist pay in Arkansas — which means practice setting and management responsibility are the only substantial levers.

Through the Arkansas State Board of Pharmacy. You need a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an accredited programme, completed intern hours under supervision, a passing NAPLEX score and the Arkansas jurisprudence examination. The board also handles controlled substance registration and the prescription monitoring programme, and it registers technicians and licenses pharmacies, so it is the single regulatory point of contact for practice in the state.

On the arithmetic, yes. The median of $136,060 is within four per cent of the national figure, the top income tax rate is 3.9% with no local income taxes, and housing costs are among the lowest in the country. A pharmacist carrying PharmD debt keeps more of the same nominal salary here than in most states. The limits are the ceiling — $164,940 at the 90th percentile — and the thinness of specialised clinical opportunities outside Little Rock and the north-west corridor.

Yes, and they are among the more interesting in the state. Independent and small-chain pharmacies across the Delta and the Ozarks have persistent recruitment difficulty, and in many rural Arkansas communities the pharmacy is the most accessible health service available. Arkansas's practice act gives pharmacists comparatively broad authority under collaborative practice and statewide protocol, which makes rural practice clinically substantial rather than dispensing-only. Recruitment incentives are common in those posts and are not captured in the published wage figures.

Because pharmacy is one of the few occupations with a genuinely national labour market attached to a single national degree. A PharmD is the same qualification everywhere, licensure requirements are broadly comparable across states, and the chains that employ a large share of pharmacists set pay bands regionally rather than locally. Trades and support occupations, by contrast, are priced against local construction and healthcare markets, which is why Arkansas shows a 22.3% gap in electrical work and a 3.4% gap here. For anyone weighing where to practise, that difference is the single most useful thing on this page.

It reports wages and salaries, which excludes the sign-on and retention incentives that Arkansas rural independent and small-chain pharmacies routinely use — a real omission in a state with a documented rural recruitment problem. The 10th percentile of $105,560 reflects part-time and early-career positions rather than a full-time entry rate. And with about 2,900 pharmacists statewide across community, hospital, long-term care and specialty settings, a single median describes a mix of quite different jobs at similar money.

Practice setting first, though less than in most states given how compressed the band is — hospital and clinical roles sit around the median while management sits well above it. Management responsibility second, and it is the clearest published lever: pharmacy manager, hospital pharmacy director and independent ownership are what the $154,540 seventy-fifth percentile and $164,940 ninetieth describe. Residency training third, for the clinical and specialty posts concentrated in Little Rock and the north-west corridor. Rural willingness fourth, since recruitment incentives outside the published data are a genuine part of the compensation picture in this state.