Pharmacy Aides
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays pharmacy aides the most, $59,960. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Utah wins, at $43,520. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For pharmacy aides, the District of Columbia leads both nominally at $59,960 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Utah first at $43,520. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$37,680
People doing it
39,530
Highest paid
$59,960
DC
Best off, really
$43,520
UT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$29,820
Highest tenth
$56,010
Lowest, really
$27,423
MS
States with data
48
National average
$40,450
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
95%
UT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $27,423 up to $43,520.
- Only 39,530 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 48 jurisdictions have a figure, with $37,680 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. The District of Columbia tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for pharmacy aides approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $27,423 to $43,520, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in pharmacy aides is 39,530. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 48 jurisdictions carry a published median for pharmacy aides. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Pharmacy Aides
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $29,820 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $37,680 |
| Top tenth earn over | $56,010 |
| This salary | $37,680 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Pharmacy Aides
The national median for this job
$37,680around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $29,820 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $37,680 |
| Top tenth | $56,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Pharmacy Aides, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $28,380 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $59,960 |
| Spread | $31,580 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $38,630 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,753 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| UT | $51,600 | $41,344 | $43,520 |
| DC | $59,960 | $47,907 | $43,236 |
| AZ | $43,360 | $36,338 | $35,941 |
| AR | $36,860 | $30,892 | $35,710 |
| SD | $36,130 | $31,210 | $35,428 |
| WA | $45,110 | $38,426 | $35,395 |
| WY | $37,030 | $31,934 | $35,151 |
| OH | $37,500 | $31,996 | $34,850 |
| NV | $39,080 | $33,581 | $34,627 |
| MO | $37,820 | $31,728 | $34,577 |
| MT | $37,140 | $31,033 | $34,388 |
| HI | $46,250 | $37,245 | $34,293 |
| ID | $37,690 | $31,320 | $34,257 |
| TX | $38,630 | $33,219 | $34,185 |
| NM | $36,390 | $30,822 | $34,100 |
| PA | $39,470 | $32,682 | $33,520 |
| AL | $36,260 | $29,775 | $33,095 |
| SC | $36,140 | $30,798 | $33,053 |
| WI | $36,660 | $30,682 | $32,957 |
| IN | $35,890 | $29,988 | $32,531 |
| ME | $38,060 | $31,464 | $32,405 |
| VT | $37,310 | $31,165 | $32,250 |
| LA | $33,450 | $28,440 | $32,192 |
| KY | $34,610 | $28,895 | $31,940 |
| IA | $33,270 | $28,260 | $31,836 |
| DE | $38,500 | $31,545 | $31,782 |
| MI | $36,130 | $29,926 | $31,774 |
| NC | $35,530 | $29,819 | $31,676 |
| MN | $37,430 | $31,071 | $31,571 |
| CA | $42,200 | $35,264 | $31,323 |
| RI | $38,020 | $31,723 | $31,282 |
| CO | $37,580 | $31,430 | $31,002 |
| IL | $37,010 | $30,230 | $30,580 |
| NH | $37,350 | $32,191 | $30,557 |
| OR | $40,250 | $31,549 | $30,127 |
| VA | $36,390 | $30,088 | $29,864 |
| GA | $34,630 | $28,876 | $29,862 |
| NE | $31,610 | $26,823 | $29,679 |
| FL | $35,160 | $30,431 | $29,416 |
| KS | $32,070 | $26,447 | $29,397 |
| CT | $36,350 | $30,361 | $29,281 |
| OK | $30,360 | $25,709 | $29,120 |
| NY | $38,040 | $31,288 | $29,071 |
| TN | $30,170 | $26,422 | $28,559 |
| NJ | $36,590 | $31,017 | $28,486 |
| MA | $37,390 | $30,673 | $28,339 |
| MD | $35,170 | $29,132 | $28,021 |
| MS | $28,380 | $23,938 | $27,423 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for pharmacy aides, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $37,680 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for pharmacy aides. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, the District of Columbia keeps the most at $47,907.
- Levelling out prices for pharmacy aides is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Mississippi sits at the bottom on $27,423.
- All wage figures for pharmacy aides are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $37,680. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for pharmacy aides is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis the District of Columbia retains the most, $47,907. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to pharmacy aides uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Mississippi at $27,423. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $27,423 — and the two source series are dated independently.