Pharmacist Salary in Pennsylvania 2026,
$138,160 Median | BLS Data by City

Pennsylvania pharmacists earn a median $138,160 a year, or $66.42 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $112,750 at the 10th percentile to $163,570 at the 90th. That is 2.0% below the national median of $140,910. The $112,750 floor is the useful figure — a doctoral degree plus two licensure examinations makes a low-paid tier structurally impossible in this profession.

Williamsport, at $151,110, with Chambersburg $150,510 immediately behind and Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington third at $148,740, then Lebanon $144,750 and Reading $143,210. Smaller Pennsylvania markets pay a recruitment premium for a PharmD who would otherwise head to the metropolitan corridor. Note also that every one of these figures exceeds the $138,160 state median, which means non-metropolitan community pharmacy across the state sits well below them.

The Pennsylvania State Board of Pharmacy, within the Department of State's Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs. Licensure requires an ACPE-accredited PharmD, the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination, the jurisprudence examination covering Pennsylvania law, and the required internship hours. The board also administers immunisation and collaborative practice authorities and regulates pharmacy technicians.

The state takes a flat 3.07%, which is low by national standards at this income. Two local layers sit on top: a municipal and school district Earned Income Tax, commonly around 1%, and — for anyone working in Philadelphia, resident or commuter — the city wage tax. That is worth modelling before comparing Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington's $148,740 with Williamsport's $151,110 or Chambersburg's $150,510, both of which are higher on gross and considerably higher after local tax and housing.

Hospital and health system practice, and the gap is widening. The clinical, ambulatory care and specialty roles clustering at the $156,970 seventy-fifth percentile sit almost entirely inside Pennsylvania's large health systems and are effectively residency-gated. Retail community pharmacy, meanwhile, has been under sustained reimbursement pressure, and the closure of pharmacies in smaller Pennsylvania towns is what places the state median below every published metro figure.

Because the metros are not where Pennsylvania's pharmacy problem is. Williamsport $151,110, Chambersburg $150,510, Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington $148,740, Lebanon $144,750 and Reading $143,210 all exceed the statewide $138,160, and the only way that holds arithmetically is if pharmacy in non-metropolitan Pennsylvania — the rural counties across the north and centre of the state — sits substantially below all of them. That is consistent with what has happened to community pharmacy economics: reimbursement margins on prescriptions have been squeezed for years, and independent and small-chain pharmacies in low-volume markets cannot pay what a health system pays.

It describes employed pharmacists. OEWS surveys establishments, so a salaried pharmacist in a hospital or a chain appears cleanly while an independent pharmacy owner's income — a business return, variable and reimbursement-dependent — does not. It also excludes on-call and after-hours arrangements common in smaller Pennsylvania hospital pharmacies, and it does not distinguish residency-trained clinical pharmacists from staff dispensing pharmacists even though that distinction accounts for much of the spread between the median and the $156,970 upper quartile.

Residency training and setting, then geography. Residency is close to a prerequisite for the clinical and ambulatory care roles at the top of this band — a PGY1 for general clinical practice and a PGY2 for specialty — and Pennsylvania's concentration of academic health systems means those programmes are unusually available here. Setting follows: health system practice out-pays community retail and the gap is structural rather than cyclical. Geography is third and counter-intuitive, with Williamsport and Chambersburg paying above Philadelphia before any tax or housing adjustment.