Pharmacist Salary in New Jersey 2026,
$137,620 Median | BLS Data by City

New Jersey pharmacists earn a median $137,620 a year, $66.16 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $131,340 and $161,240 and a full range of $112,560 to $172,110. That is 2.3% below the $140,910 national median, which is a weak result for a state with this cost of living.

Trenton-Princeton at $138,910, then Atlantic City-Hammonton at $134,890 and Vineland at $134,050 — a spread of under five thousand dollars across the three metros BLS reports as New Jersey-only. Northern New Jersey pharmacists are counted inside the New York-Newark-Jersey City multi-state metro and do not appear as a New Jersey area in the OEWS tables.

Because the state's pharmaceutical industry does not employ pharmacists at the counter. Medical affairs, regulatory, pharmacovigilance and clinical development roles along the Route 1 and Morris County corridors are classified under different occupation codes, so the PharmD holders working in them are invisible to this figure. What remains is retail and hospital dispensing, priced against national chain pay scales that vary little by state, and a well-supplied market at a location quotient of 1.06.

Through the New Jersey State Board of Pharmacy: a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an accredited programme, the NAPLEX, the New Jersey multistate pharmacy jurisprudence examination and supervised internship hours. Pharmacists licensed elsewhere can transfer their licence by reciprocity but must still sit the New Jersey jurisprudence examination, which is the step that catches most out-of-state applicants by surprise.

New Jersey's gross income tax is progressive to 10.75%, and a $137,620 salary sits in the 6.37% bracket; no New Jersey municipality taxes employee wages. The larger cost is New Jersey itself — the highest effective property taxes in the country and housing priced by proximity to New York and Philadelphia, which is what makes a below-national median in this state a real problem rather than a rounding error.

It measures dispensing pharmacy and nothing else. New Jersey has more PharmD holders working in industry than almost any state, in medical science liaison, regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance and clinical operations roles, and those salaries are counted under other occupation codes entirely. A prospective pharmacy student in New Jersey should read $137,620 as the price of the dispensing career, not as the value of the degree in this state — which is a genuinely different and better story.

It is contracting. National chain consolidation and store closures have removed dispensing positions across New Jersey, and the positions that remain carry higher script volume per pharmacist and more responsibility for immunisation and clinical services without a corresponding rate increase. That pressure is a large part of why the New Jersey median sits below the national figure and why the state's growth is concentrated in health system, specialty and infusion pharmacy instead.

Residency and setting. A PGY1 residency, and a PGY2 in oncology, critical care or infectious disease, is what opens the clinical specialist roles that reach the $161,240 seventy-fifth percentile — and New Jersey's large systems run competitive programmes. Specialty and infusion pharmacy, serving a substantial oncology population, pays above general retail. Pharmacy management and health system directorships reach the $172,110 ninetieth percentile. Overnight and floating retail assignments carry differentials, but they are a premium for inconvenience rather than a career step.