Industry group, 4561
Health and Personal Care Retailers
1,076,240 people work in this industry in the US, at mean pay of $56,830 a year (BLS, May 2025). What follows is how much of their working time the best AI models could finish, when, and in which jobs and tasks. Estimates.
of the paid hours. Estimate.
a year: 590 million hours at what they cost. Not a forecast of savings.
- 34%
- 17%
- 50%
of the paid hours are within reach now in tasks people already bring to Claude. Another 24% is within reach in tasks not yet seen there.
Across the US: 22% within reach now and 37% by the end of 2028, on the long-run pace at four in five.
Share of the paid hours within reach, now to 2030
What each choice means: , , , , . Every pace starts from .
How far this has come
With GPT-4, measured in March 2023, 0% of this industry's paid hours were within reach at . With Claude 3.7 Sonnet, measured in February 2025, 5%. With Claude Mythos Preview (early), measured in April 2026, 25%. Today's estimate: 27%.
A backcast: today's task data with the best model METR had measured by each date. It shows how fast the models have moved, not what anyone forecast at the time.
Where the hours are
Jobs by hours within reach now. The 39 largest jobs hold 95% of the people.
| People | Pay here | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pharmacy Technicians | 245,060 | 26% | 130 million | $39K |
| Pharmacists | 121,990 | 35% | 90 million | $133K |
| Retail Salespersons | 179,090 | 19% | 72 million | $35K |
| Cashiers | 136,860 | 19% | 53 million | $35K |
| Customer Service Representatives | 22,190 | 64% | 30 million | $41K |
| Pharmacy Aides | 27,330 | 46% | 26 million | $37K |
| First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers | 38,390 | 28% | 23 million | $50K |
| General and Operations Managers | 44,010 | 23% | 21 million | $72K |
| Stockers and Order Fillers | 36,080 | 19% | 14 million | $36K |
| Office Clerks, General | 12,010 | 54% | 14 million | $39K |
| Shipping, Receiving, and Inventory Clerks | 9,850 | 53% | 11 million | $43K |
| Receptionists and Information Clerks | 7,890 | 59% | 9.6 million | $36K |
People: BLS counts for this industry, May 2025. Pay here: the median paid for the job in this industry, else its mean, else the national median. 132 smaller jobs (51,970 people) count in every total but are not listed. Task data covers 99% of the industry's people; the rest are in BLS "all other" groups with no task list, or in counts BLS does not publish.
The tasks with the most hours within reach by the end of 2028
Across the whole industry, on the chosen pace and reliability.
- Prepare and process medical insurance claim forms and records.Pharmacy Technicians40 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Plan, implement, or maintain procedures for mixing, packaging, or labeling pharmaceuticals, according to policy and legal requirements, to ensure quality, security, and proper disposal.Pharmacists38 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Analyze prescribing trends to monitor patient compliance and to prevent excessive usage or harmful interactions.Pharmacists31 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Establish or maintain patient profiles, including lists of medications taken by individual patients.Pharmacy Technicians23 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Maintain knowledge of current sales and promotions, policies regarding payment and exchanges, and security practices.Retail Salespersons22 million hours50% of the task within reach
- Keep periodic balance sheets of amounts and numbers of transactions.Cashiers20 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Receive written prescription or refill requests and verify that information is complete and accurate.Pharmacy Technicians16 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Price and file prescriptions that have been filled.Pharmacy Technicians15 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Compile and maintain non-monetary reports and records.Cashiers14 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Manage pharmacy operations, hiring or supervising staff, performing administrative duties, or buying or selling non-pharmaceutical merchandise.Pharmacists13 million hours100% of the task within reach
Scan a typical company in this industry
The industry's largest jobs, in the proportions BLS counts across the whole industry, at the pay it pays, run through the company scan. A starting point before you have a roster, or a benchmark for the one you have.
How it is built: BLS counts the people in each job in this industry; each job's tasks and their lengths give its share within reach at a date; the industry's share is those shares weighted by people. Value is pay times 1.43 for benefits and payroll costs. Seen in Claude use splits today's share by whether Anthropic saw people bring each task to Claude in 2025; other AI tools are not counted. How it works