Professionals · code 2262
Pharmacists
AI can flag the drug interaction. The pharmacist still decides what's safe for you.
Advising on how drugs interact is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Prescription records are mostly out of its reach, and preparing and storing medicines it barely touches.
What they actually do (and what else they get called)
Pharmacists store, preserve, compound and dispense medicinal products and counsel on the proper use and adverse effects of drugs and medicines following prescriptions issued by medical doctors and other health professionals. They contribute to researching, testing, preparing, prescribing and monitoring medicinal therapies for optimizing human health. Tasks include - (a) receiving prescriptions for medicinal products from medical doctors and other health professionals, checking patients’ medicine histories, and ensuring proper dosage and methods of administration and drug compatibility before dispensing; (b) preparing or supervising the preparation and labelling of liquid medicines, ointments, powders, tablets and other medications to fill prescriptions; (c) providing information and advice to prescribers and clients regarding drug interactions, incompatibility and contraindications, side effects, dosage and proper medication storage; (d) collaborating with other health care professionals to plan, monitor, review, and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the medicine therapy of individual patients, and the effectiveness of particular drugs or therapies; (e) maintaining prescription files and recording the issue of narcotics, poisons and habit-forming drugs in accordance with legal and professional requirements; (f) storing and preserving vaccines, serums and other drugs subject to deterioration; (g) advising clients on and supplying non-prescription medicines and diagnostic and therapeutic aids for common conditions; (h) supervising and coordinating the work of pharmacy technicians, pharmacy interns and pharmacy sales assistants; (i) conducting research to develop and improve pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and related chemical products; (j) conferring with chemists, engineering professionals and other professionals about manufacturing techniques and ingredients; (k) testing and analysing drugs to determine their identity, purity and strength in relation to specified standards; (l) evaluating labels, packaging and advertising of drug products; (m) developing information and risks of particular drugs. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Dispensing chemist - Hospital pharmacist - Industrial pharmacist - Retail pharmacist Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Pharmacologist - 2131 - Pharmaceutical technician - 3213
- pharmacist
Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.
67 / 100
Mostly holds up against AI
AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.
Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.
The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure
264 of 427 for holding up against AI
Not quite your week? Make it yours ↓
Why this score?
The ILO rated each of this job's 13 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 33.2 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 33.2 = 66.8.
That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.
This job rates 24.3 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
Man v Bot · compare
Who holds up better?
Pharmacists 67
vGo on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.
Man v Bot
Where the bot helps, and where the human wins
Bot
What AI takes
The routine stuff. You may not miss it.
- Interaction checks and drug information.
- Prescription records.
- Automated dispensing.
Man
What people still do better
Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.
- Clinical judgement about medicines.
- Advising patients face to face.
- Supervising safe dispensing.
Both
What's arriving
New work that only exists because the AI does.
- More clinical services in community pharmacies.
- Checking AI prescribing suggestions.
- Personalised medicine.
Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.
Meet your two rivals
They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.
The AI
Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.
Threat level: Low
32 could do without you
It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 68 of 100.
The robot
The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.
How much it matters here: Lower
24 how hands-on
Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.
So could a robot do the physical part?
Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.
Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 27 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.
hands-on
and cramped
Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on
The small print
They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.
From O*NET, matched to one US job .
finger skill 37.4 · hand skill 34 · cramped spaces 9.7 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50
estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement
The job, task by task
Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.
AI's favourite task here scores 50, against an average of 33. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.
- 50
Providing information and advice to prescribers and clients regarding drug interactions, incompatibility and contraindications, side effects, dosage and proper medication storage
Medium - 41
Maintaining prescription files and recording issue of narcotics, poisons and habit-forming drugs in accordance with legal and professional requirements
Low - 37
Evaluating labels, packaging and advertising of drug products
Low - 36
Testing and analysing drugs to determine their identity, purity and strength in relation to specified standards
Low - 36
Developing information and risks of particular drugs.
Low - 35
Advising clients on and supplying non-prescription medicines and diagnostic and therapeutic aids for common conditions
Low - 34
Supervising and coordinating the work of pharmacy technicians, pharmacy interns and pharmacy sales assistants
Low - 34
Receiving prescriptions for medicinal products from medical doctors and other health professionals, checking patients' medicine histories, and ensuring proper dosage and methods of administration and drug compatibility before dispensing
Low - 34
Conferring with chemists, engineering professionals and other professionals about manufacturing techniques and ingredients
Low - 32
Conducting research to develop and improve pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and related chemical products
Low - 31
Collaborating with other health care professionals to plan, monitor, review, and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of the medicine therapy of individual patients, and the effectiveness of particular drugs or therapies
Low - 24
Preparing or supervising the preparation and labelling of liquid medicines, ointments, powders, tablets and other medications to fill prescriptions
Very Low - 11
Storing and preserving vaccines, serums and other drugs subject to deterioration
Very Low
13 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
New · the weekly task audit
Your week, your score
The score above assumes pharmacists spend the same time on every task. You don't. Slide each task to how much of your week it takes, and we'll re-weight the same ILO ratings to fit your job.
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
Your score
67 / 100
Same as the job as a whole, so far.
Move the sliders to make it yours.
The job as a whole: 67 / 100
Link copied.
Nothing you enter leaves your browser. The link just carries your slider positions.
Sidekick or replacement?
A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.
- AI helps you
- 68
- AI does it for you
- 32
Sidekick wins, by 36 points.
How good a match is this?
One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.
estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2515
Meanwhile, in real life…
Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?
Out of every 100 conversations
worked through it together handed it over
The small print
Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.15% of the conversations.
These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.
observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product
So, should pharmacists be worried?
Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.
Parts of it are changing. Advising on drug interactions is rated Medium, and records, labelling, testing, supervising and checking prescriptions are Low; preparing and storing medicines rate Very Low. Software already flags interactions and robots dispense; pharmacists move towards clinical advice.
Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.
How are the neighbours doing?
There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is above the family average.
- Creative and performing artists not e… 87
- Veterinarians 86
- Dentists 85
- Religious professionals 83
- Dancers and choreographers 81
- Health professionals not elsewhere cl… 81
- Early childhood educators 79
- Visual artists 79
- Paramedical practitioners 77
- Optometrists and ophthalmic opticians 76
- Audiologists and speech therapists 76
- Nursing professionals 75
- Primary school teachers 74
- Specialist medical practitioners 73
- Environmental and occupational health… 72
- Musicians, singers and composers 72
- Social work and counselling professio… 72
- Physiotherapists 72
- Special needs teachers 72
- Farming, forestry and fisheries advis… 72
- Generalist medical practitioners 71
- Mining engineers, metallurgists and r… 71
- Secondary education teachers 70
- Midwifery professionals 70
- Civil engineers 70
- Engineering professionals not elsewhe… 70
- Judges 69
- Electrical engineers 69