Pharmacist Salary in Georgia 2026,
$137,120 Median | BLS Data by City

Georgia pharmacists earn a median $137,120 a year, $65.92 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $126,520 and $158,880. The full range of $100,950 to $170,110 understates the bottom: the 10th percentile captures relief and part-time pharmacists whose annual wages reflect fewer hours rather than a lower rate.

Rome pays the most at $142,090, then Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell at $139,870, Savannah at $137,420, Brunswick-St. Simons at $136,680 and Gainesville at $135,920. Rome beating Atlanta is the headline: small-market Georgia pharmacy carries a genuine retention premium and none of Atlanta's cost of living.

The Georgia State Board of Pharmacy, under the Office of the Secretary of State, licenses pharmacists. You need a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an accredited programme, the required internship hours, and passing scores on the NAPLEX and the Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination taken for Georgia, together with a criminal background check. Georgia also requires continuing education, including content on drug abuse and diversion, for renewal.

Georgia participates in licence transfer for pharmacists originally licensed by examination elsewhere. The process runs through the standard national score transfer, plus the Georgia jurisprudence examination and the Board's application and background check. As in most states, a licence that was itself obtained by reciprocity rather than by examination generally cannot be transferred onward into Georgia.

Financially, often yes. Rome at $142,090 pays more than Atlanta at $139,870 in gross terms, and because Georgia has no local income tax the difference passes straight through. Add housing costs that are a fraction of Atlanta's and the small-market advantage becomes substantial. The trade-off is a narrower set of employers and fewer clinical specialty roles, which matters if you want to reach the state 90th percentile of $170,110.

Because pharmacist supply is metro-concentrated and demand is not. Georgia's pharmacy schools feed graduates into Atlanta, where competition for positions is real and employers do not have to pay a premium. Rome, Brunswick and similar markets have to attract a pharmacist willing to live there, and with a small candidate pool the price rises. The same logic explains why Georgia's rural independents have been the state's hardest posts to fill.

That the bottom of this distribution is an hours effect, not a rate effect. OEWS reports wages actually paid, so a pharmacist working relief or part-time appears at a low annual figure despite a normal hourly rate. Georgia's chain and independent pharmacy sector relies heavily on relief coverage, which is why $100,950 sits so far below the $126,520 at the 25th percentile. No Georgia pharmacist should read the 10th percentile as a starting salary.

It has pushed new graduates toward hospital and health-system practice and made residency far more important than it was a decade ago. Chain closures have been concentrated in metro Atlanta, where store density was highest, while rural pharmacy has become harder to staff rather than smaller. The consequence is that Georgia's best-paid roles — clinical specialties reaching the state 75th percentile of $158,880 — now generally require postgraduate training that retail practice never did.