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There has been a sustained decrease in online job adverts seeking pharmacists over the past year, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data have revealed.
In February 2026 — the most recent month for which data are available — there were 46% fewer online adverts compared with February 2025, at 2,095 and 1,124, respectively.
To gather the data, the ONS used web-scraping software to collect information from around 90,000 job boards and recruitment pages. Each figure given represents the number of new online adverts that appeared in that month.
Overall, there has been a decrease in new online job adverts each month from April 2025 compared with the previous year. For example, there were 36% fewer new online job adverts in April 2025 (n=1,612) compared with April 2024 (n=2,501). This gap increased in December 2025 (n=739), when there were 52% fewer new job postings than December 2024 (n=1,527).
The only exception was in March 2025 when there were 1,977 adverts — 22% more than March 2024 (n=1,622; see Figure).
Figure: Online advertisements for pharmacist posts in the UK
A similar trend has been observed with online job adverts for pharmacy technicians. In March 2025, the ONS recorded 962 new adverts, which was an increase of 1.5% compared with March 2024 (n=948). However, a year-on-year decrease was recorded in every other consecutive month until February 2026.
This ranges from a 6% drop in May 2025 compared with May 2024, to a 54% drop in December 2025 compared with the same time the previous year.
Across the three Great Britain nations, England and Wales showed a sustained decrease in online job advertisements every month from April 2025 until February 2026. However, there was a fall in only 5 of those 12 months in Scotland.
The trend in pharmacy job advert numbers does not follow the same pattern as data for all types of online job adverts combined. In February 2026, data showed 593,360 online job postings, 18% fewer than February 2025, when there were 724,372.
But across 12 months for all types of job adverts, the ONS reported an increase in the overall number of adverts in 7 months.
The latest figures continue a trend of reduced online pharmacist job advertising over recent years. In October 2025, The Pharmaceutical Journal reported that UK online job adverts for pharmacists fell by 16% between October 2024 (n=26,639) and September 2025 (n=22,325).
That followed a 21% drop in the second quarter of 2024, compared with the same period in 2023.
Leyla Hannbeck, chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, commented: “These figures reflect what we are hearing across the sector. It is not that pharmacies do not need staff, it is that many simply cannot afford to recruit. This puts huge pressure on existing staff to maintain patient care.
“Pharmacies are facing a perfect storm of rising costs, including increased National Insurance contributions, a higher minimum wage, and now the impact of the business rates hike coming into force, alongside ongoing medicine shortages and funding pressures.
“This is being felt on the ground, with teams stretched and capacity reduced, which ultimately impacts patient care. Without proper funding, pharmacies will struggle to invest in staff and services, and this trend is likely to continue.”
Colin Rodden, professional secretary of the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists, said: “Funding cuts in NHS trusts mean that posts are either not being replaced or replaced only after a lengthening delay.
“This is likely to be a symptom of NHS funding changes and enormous (and annual ongoing) cost improvement programmes being asked of NHS services. The work isn’t reducing but relative funding is, and the impact on the workforce is significant, likely fuelling burnout and increased sickness rates.
“Some employers may be choosing (or being forced) to promote internally (to save money, but only on essential roles for service delivery or governance) therefore adverts would not be public. We suspect we will see a lack of progressional opportunities for pharmacy staff as a result of that. This has an impact on every patient-facing sector in pharmacy as there is increased staff burnout and less staff means patients are forced to wait longer.”
Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the Company Chemists’ Association, said: “Unfortunately, the reduction in pharmacist job adverts found in this review of the data is not surprising. Our analysis shows that, between September 2022 and June 2024, the pharmacy network lost the equivalent of 3.4 million hours of access per year — 62% due to permanent closures and 38% due to reduced opening hours.
“Pharmacies are having to reduce their opening hours, or indeed close permanently, due to the chronic underfunding of the community pharmacy contractual framework.
“We urgently need investment in the sector to close the significant gap between what the NHS pays for pharmaceutical services and what they actually cost to deliver,” he added.
