It is common knowledge that there are many industries in the United States of America today have an intense labor shortage. Even worse in many of these industry there are not enough kids in school going after the correct college degrees to be able to work in these industries. Even worse on top of that is the fact that over regulation in many industries is causing ongoing education requirements and making it tougher for people to maintain licenses to even work in the industry.

One industry that is under a huge labor shortage is the pharmacy business. Companies like Rite Aid and Eckerd Drugs have a really tough time securing people to work behind the counters in the pharmacy. Now that Rite Aid and Eckerd Drugs have merged this might help the labor shortage temporarily, however meanwhile Wal-Mart has entered the market in a big way. This means the labor shortage will most likely continue.

The question is; are there too many drugs on the market for the pharmacy professionals to stay up on all the information or are the requirements now to get into the industry too tough and college students are shying away from that career path? We need more pharmacy professionals and we need them yesterday. As the number of people and ratio of "old to young" in our nation climbs we will also see the labor shortages become more critical.

The Merger Between Eckerd Drug and Rite Aid may have helped a little but not much since very few stores will be actually closing unless they were across the street from each other and we know Wal-Mart will be picking up the slack if any customers end up switching and they will be on the market for 1,000s of new pharmacists too.