Pharmacy graduates struggle to land jobs in oversaturated market

AMMAN — The unemployment rate among pharmacists has currently reached 30 per cent, according to the Jordan Pharmacists Association (JPA).

JPA President Mohammad Ababneh said that Jordanian universities graduate about 4,000 pharmacists annually. However, only a quarter of these graduates are able to find work in the Kingdom, Ababneh added. There are currently 17,000 pharmacy students enrolled in universities across the country, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Pharmacy and Doctor of Pharmacy majors are classified as stagnant and overloaded fields, according to the Civil Service Bureau. This classification indicates that the number of pharmacy graduates applying for employment with the bureau far exceeds the number of vacancies currently available, Ababneh said.

Ababneh also mentioned that employment opportunities for pharmacy graduates outside Jordan are “very limited”, as many countries have adopted a policy of localising these professions by limiting their availability to their own citizens.

Marah Abu Hamoor, a 2019 pharmacy graduate, told The Jordan Times that she is still looking for a job.

“When I graduated, I struggled to find a job for months, and when I finally did, the working conditions were horrible. Pharmacy owners exploit graduates with long working hours, with more than eight hours a day, at the minimum wage, which is nothing,” Abu Hamoor said.

She also indicated that the Jordanian labour market does not have diversity in choice for recent pharmacy graduates, stating that “there are multiple jobs a pharmacy graduate can have other than being a pharmacist, but unfortunately there are no opportunities for us here in Jordan”.

“Most of my cohort has the same struggles, and many of them are working in a completely different field due to the lack of proper job opportunities,” she added.

Abu Hamoor called on the government to regulate the sector, and to monitor pharmacies to protect the rights of workers. “We need better working conditions in order to be able to actually find a job we can stick with,” she continued.

Samir Tayyan, a pharmacy graduate working as a medical sales representative, said that the pharmacy field in Jordan is “dying”.

“Pharmacy jobs are very limited here in Jordan, which is why I went with a medical sales representative job,” Tayyan told The Jordan Times.

Mohammed Afaneh, a recent pharmacy graduate, said that graduating during the pandemic was “very challenging”.

“Due to the pandemic, all sectors want to cut costs and save money. Many pharmacies [have shut] down, therefore, the graduates from the last two years have had it the worst,” Afaneh said.

He noted that he had to work from home as a customer service agent until he was able to find a job in his field, “I only recently started working as a pharmacist. It was challenging after a year post-graduation to remember everything I learned, but luckily I was able to manage,” Afaneh said.