Pharmacy Technicians
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays pharmacy technicians the most, $58,900. 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 North Dakota wins, at $45,606. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For pharmacy technicians, Washington leads both nominally at $58,900 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 North Dakota first at $45,606. 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
$45,750
People doing it
471,680
Highest paid
$58,900
WA
Best off, really
$45,606
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$36,020
Highest tenth
$61,040
Lowest, really
$30,618
NJ
States with data
51
National average
$46,620
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $30,618 to $45,606. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 471,680 people hold this job nationally, earning $45,750 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $45,750 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in pharmacy technicians is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $30,618 through $45,606. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 471,680 are employed nationally in pharmacy technicians, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 51 jurisdictions report pharmacy technicians, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Pharmacy Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $36,020 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $45,750 |
| Top tenth earn over | $61,040 |
| This salary | $45,750 |
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 Technicians
The national median for this job
$45,750around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $36,020 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $45,750 |
| Top tenth | $61,040 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Pharmacy Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $38,210 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $58,900 |
| Spread | $20,690 |
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 | $45,900 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $47,234 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $47,560 | $40,394 | $45,606 |
| WA | $58,900 | $49,506 | $45,602 |
| WY | $48,260 | $40,957 | $45,083 |
| MT | $49,400 | $40,308 | $44,665 |
| SD | $46,170 | $39,278 | $44,585 |
| AK | $52,640 | $44,476 | $43,726 |
| NM | $46,630 | $38,609 | $42,716 |
| NE | $46,610 | $38,214 | $42,283 |
| NV | $47,980 | $40,732 | $42,000 |
| IA | $44,860 | $37,132 | $41,831 |
| LA | $44,410 | $36,917 | $41,788 |
| ID | $46,420 | $37,872 | $41,424 |
| UT | $48,140 | $38,718 | $40,755 |
| VT | $47,940 | $39,350 | $40,720 |
| WI | $45,970 | $37,704 | $40,500 |
| CO | $49,970 | $40,841 | $40,284 |
| TX | $45,900 | $39,061 | $40,196 |
| OR | $54,900 | $42,039 | $40,143 |
| CA | $55,110 | $44,962 | $39,937 |
| MN | $48,300 | $39,224 | $39,854 |
| IN | $44,560 | $36,699 | $39,811 |
| AZ | $47,640 | $39,670 | $39,237 |
| NC | $44,530 | $36,692 | $38,976 |
| TN | $41,920 | $35,863 | $38,764 |
| KS | $43,310 | $34,851 | $38,739 |
| MI | $44,340 | $36,173 | $38,407 |
| NH | $47,360 | $40,234 | $38,192 |
| SC | $42,120 | $35,472 | $38,070 |
| ME | $45,400 | $36,914 | $38,018 |
| IL | $46,650 | $37,499 | $37,933 |
| OK | $40,500 | $33,400 | $37,831 |
| DE | $46,430 | $37,477 | $37,759 |
| OH | $40,650 | $34,441 | $37,512 |
| AR | $38,680 | $32,287 | $37,322 |
| CT | $47,050 | $38,117 | $36,761 |
| MS | $39,040 | $32,079 | $36,749 |
| MO | $40,100 | $33,453 | $36,456 |
| RI | $44,380 | $36,595 | $36,086 |
| FL | $43,590 | $37,205 | $35,963 |
| VA | $44,610 | $36,220 | $35,950 |
| KY | $39,200 | $32,423 | $35,839 |
| GA | $41,910 | $34,362 | $35,535 |
| WV | $38,210 | $31,895 | $35,529 |
| AL | $39,030 | $31,879 | $35,433 |
| MD | $45,120 | $36,654 | $35,256 |
| DC | $47,410 | $38,595 | $34,832 |
| MA | $46,470 | $37,515 | $34,660 |
| HI | $46,760 | $37,619 | $34,637 |
| PA | $40,040 | $33,123 | $33,972 |
| NY | $43,930 | $35,703 | $33,173 |
| NJ | $39,610 | $33,338 | $30,618 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of pharmacy technicians earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $45,750.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for pharmacy technicians, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $49,506.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for pharmacy technicians. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits New Jersey, on $30,618.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for pharmacy technicians, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $45,750, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for pharmacy technicians model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $49,506, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for pharmacy technicians rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; New Jersey anchors the distribution at $30,618. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.