Introduction (relevance). The reasons for the continued imbalance between supply and demand in the pharmacy segment of the pharmaceutical market of the Russian Federation are a consequence of the imperfection of the mechanism for staffing the pharmaceutical labor market. One of the possible approaches to solving the problem of purposeful managed distribution of graduates can be a set of measures aimed at managing the professional self-determination of a graduate through active participation in shaping his personal preferences in building a career strategy even at the stage of finding an individual in the personnel training system. To assess the effectiveness and compliance of educational trajectories with the tasks of ensuring a "soft" distribution of graduates, a methodology is proposed for determining the qualitative characteristics of the labor potential of the student contingent. Goal. Assessment of the labor preferences of the contingent of students mastering the programs of pharmaceutical education, characterizing its labor potential. Materials and methods. To clarify the preliminary value of labor potential, a method was proposed for redistributing respondents' responses based on data obtained as part of assessing the likelihood of students choosing a different employment area. Results. The nature of the change in the initial value of labor potential, characterized by a set of labor preferences in the target segment, with varying degrees of probability, has been determined. Discussions. With the highest degree of probability, when specifying the preliminary value of labor potential, redistribution occurs mainly in the field of retail trade in medicines; with a probability of 75% more or less evenly across the spheres, but mainly in the field of quality control of medicines and pharmacovigilance, to a lesser extent in the field of retail trade in medicines; with a probability of 50% more-less evenly across the spheres, but mainly in the fields of registration of medicines, wholesale trade and pharmacovigilance. Conclusions. The assessment of the labor preferences of the contingent of students demonstrates that at the national level, the substantive and organizational training of personnel in the programs of higher pharmaceutical education is built in such a way that in the absence of the student's experience in combining study with work, during the primary entry into the labor market, only half of graduates will consider employment in the pharmacy segment.