Prescription for Your Future: Pharmacy Technician Salary

Pharmacy technicians play a vital role in the modern health care system. Reporting directly to a licensed pharmacist, their primary duties are preparing and administering medications and other medical supplies to patients. They may also coordinate with doctor's offices and insurance companies to handle the associated paperwork. If this sounds promising to you, take a minute to learn about your pharmacy technician salary.

Pharmacy technician salaries can vary based on a lot of elements, but here's what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says you can expect:

Where you work can have a huge impact on your pharmacy technician salary. Here are the top three states for a pharmacy tech's mean annual salary, according to the BLS:

Top States:

• California: $37,280
• Texas: $29,920
• Florida: $27,890

It's worth noting that while insurance carriers and scientific research offer some of the highest salaries, pharmacy technicians are primarily employed in these three areas:

Pharmacy technicians have a variety of backgrounds, but the BLS reports that 76 percent of working pharmacy technicians have some amount of college-level training, while 16 percent of their fellow technicians have a high school diploma or equivalent. Only three percent of working techs have no high school diploma. The lesson here: Go to school!

Although no certification is required to be a pharmacy technician, certification can increase your chances of getting hired, and can definitely influence your pharmacy tech salary. Two certifying organizations are the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board and the Institute for the Certification of Pharmacy Technicians. Applicants with relevant work experience and/or training from an accredited school can sit for these exams.

Since pharmacy technician salaries have the potential to increase dramatically as you gain experience, why not get started on your college-level training or certification today? You have everything to gain by earning your degree from a top accredited school.