Pharmacist Salary in Virginia 2026,
$144,060 Median | BLS Data by City

Virginia pharmacists earn a median $144,060 a year, $69.26 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $128,230 and $161,600 and a full range of $106,800 to $173,550. That is 2.2% above the $140,910 national median.

Richmond at $144,940, then Lynchburg at $144,090, Charlottesville at $142,220, Staunton-Stuarts Draft at $138,030 and Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk at $136,280. The spread across the whole state is under nine thousand dollars, because retail pharmacy pay is set against national chain scales rather than local labour markets.

Through the Virginia Board of Pharmacy at the Department of Health Professions: a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an accredited programme, the NAPLEX, the Virginia multistate pharmacy jurisprudence examination and supervised internship hours. Pharmacists licensed elsewhere transfer by reciprocity but must still sit the Virginia jurisprudence examination, which is the step most out-of-state applicants underestimate.

Not necessarily at entry, but the ceiling is much higher. Chain retail and hospital staff roles both sit around the $128,230 twenty-fifth percentile, but hospital practice leads to residency-trained clinical specialist and management positions that reach the $161,600 seventy-fifth percentile and the $173,550 ninetieth. Retail management raises pay without opening that route, which is the trade-off worth understanding early.

Virginia's income tax reaches 5.75% at seventeen thousand dollars of taxable income, so a $144,060 salary faces an effectively flat state rate with no local income tax anywhere in the state. For pharmacists in Northern Virginia, work performed in the District of Columbia or Maryland is taxed there with a Virginia credit, which frequently erases the apparent advantage of an offer across the line.

Because the largest employer group prices nationally. Chain community pharmacy sets pay bands centrally with modest geographic adjustment, and those chains employ a large share of Virginia's 7,980 pharmacists. The result is Richmond at $144,940 and Lynchburg at $144,090 essentially level, despite very different costs of living — which incidentally makes a Lynchburg or Staunton pharmacy job a strong real-terms proposition compared with the same role in a high-cost market.

It measures dispensing and clinical pharmacy on a payroll basis and misses two things. Overnight, floating and rural-relief retail assignments carry differentials that inflate individual annual earnings without representing a career step. And PharmD holders working in industry, managed care and the federal agencies clustered in Northern Virginia are classified under other occupation codes entirely, so the value of the degree in this state is broader than the $144,060 figure implies.

Residency, then specialty. A PGY1 residency, and a PGY2 in oncology, critical care or infectious disease, is what opens the clinical specialist roles that reach the $161,600 seventy-fifth percentile, and Virginia's academic systems at VCU and UVA run competitive programmes. Specialty and infusion pharmacy pays above general retail. Health system pharmacy leadership reaches the $173,550 ninetieth percentile. Virginia's expanded practice protocols have also made ambulatory clinical roles more available than they were, which is a genuinely newer route.