There is absolutely and certainly NOT a lack of jobs in pharmacy. I am a graduate and was offered 4 different pre-registration jobs for the coming year. After this there are a whole plethora of directions my career could take, and a vast number of different, varied and enjoyable jobs I can work in.
The beauty of holding a pharmacy degree is that it is so versatile. I can work in community, hospital, academia, industry (GSK/AZ/Pfizer etc), GP surgeries, A&E departments, finance, clinical commissioning groups, for councils and governments, and many many more areas. To get put off such an incredible career based on the premise that if you locum for a large chain community pharmacy in one part of the country your pay has decreased my £1 per hour would be a massive shame. The entire NHS is feeling the pinch at the moment.
It's important to ask why the locum rate has dropped. It used to be artificially high because years ago there simply weren't enough pharmacists to supply demand, so naturally the price to hire one skyrocketed. As a result, locum requests were filled with whoever was available to do the job, not by the best person for the job. In a patient-facing role this is dangerous, as the quality of care the patient receives is low, and trust in the profession is then eroded, as has happened in pharmacy in recent years.
New schools of pharmacy provide innovative new ways of educating students, as existing schools, although strong and established, can fall into a "this is the way we've always done things" trap. This is a danger in the education of healthcare professionals as healthcare is constantly changing and adapting, so education and training needs to too. A growth in the number of pharmacy students graduating with new knowledge and skills means the locum rates are dropping, as there are more pharmacists able to fill these roles. Competition has driven prices down but also driven the quality of pharmacists up, unfortunately resulting in those less skilled and upset by the situation to take to online forums to complain.
It all comes down to this: do you want to get an artificially high wage for doing a mediocre job, or do you want to take ownership of your career, shape and structure it however you want through a vast, varied and opportunity filled profession, and get a more than fair wage for a rewarding and exciting career? If you love what you do, you never have to "work" a day in your life. I've loved my pathway into pharmacy so far, and yes some may call me naive and only a recent graduate, but my generation are the mindset of the future of the profession, and if you want to join us in creating a bold new profession that puts patients at the centre of what we do, then be a pharmacist.