**3. Results**

Fourteen days of data resulted in 21,007 individual position listings, with 96.78% of those being in a retail setting. These technician position listings included positions from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. A little over one-third (37.5%) of the positions were from California, Florida, Illinois, New York, or Texas (N = 1983, 9%; N = 1889, 9%; N = 1242, 6%; N = 1188, 5.7%; and N = 1568, 7.5%, respectively). A majority of the job listings were for full-time positions (96.4%). Settings for these positions included hospital systems, retail pharmacies, and managed care companies (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Pharmacy technician job listings by setting.

Pharmacy technician job listing in the managed care setting are not reflected in Figure 1 due to sample size of 6.

The requirements included in the listings are displayed in Table 3. The most common requirements were registration with State Board, high school diploma, ability to perform tasks, communication, and physical (N = 18,261 86.9%, N = 17,325 82.5%, N = 16,861 80.3%, N = 16,436 78.2%, and N = 15,908 75.7%, respectively).


**Table 3.** Pharmacy Technician Job Requirements.

PTCP = Pharmacy Technician Certification Board; exCPT = Exam for the Certification of Pharmacy Technicians.

Additional information collected but not reported in Table 3 include that 9.1% (N = 1904) required some form of technician program coursework and almost 1% of listings required or preferred at least an associate's degree level of education (required N = 131, 0.6%; preferred N = 56, 0.3%).

The job duties included in the listings are displayed in Table 4. The most common job duties were general o ffice etiquette, performing tasks under the direct supervision of the pharmacist, and professionalism (19,961 95%, 18,043 85.9%, and 10,560 50.3%, respectively.



Additional information collected related to duties worth noting include 10 listings that required pharmacy technicians to have experience in patient assistance programs (0.0%, N = 10), HIV knowledge (0.0%, N = 3), maintaining narcotic coordination and investigational drug therapy (0.8%, N = 167), calculations (0.4%, N = 76), and managing di fficult or emotional patient situations (0.0%, N = 2).

In Figures 2 and 3, the pharmacy technician position ad requirements and duties are indicated by job setting.

Of note in the pharmacy requirements as separated by setting, 11.7% (N = 79) of included hospital advertisements included a legal piece of some sort, whereas less than 1 % (0.3%, N = 55) of retail and 0 in managed care did.

Some individual technician ads listed unique and unheard of duties and requirements for applicants. One example of this would be a job duty listed as "be HIV knowledgeable" without further context; the same ad listed that technicians were expected to assist patients in "solving issues and problems related to AIDS." Another example was a pharmacy technician position that expected the applicant to be able to operate a forklift and hand tools. One technician position examined included

requirements that technicians be willing to travel for meetings, conferences, and "field support" in order to "support and grow key customer relationships."

**Figure 2.** Pharmacy technician position ad requirements by setting.

**Figure 3.** Pharmacy technician position ad job duties by setting.
