How long drug shortages last, measured on FDA's current list

Of the 69 drugs on FDA's current shortage list on Oct. 30, 2026, only four had been added within the past year. Fifty-seven had been listed for three years or more, and 17 for at least eight.

GxRadar computed those figures from the first-posted dates in FDA's shortage records, which the agency publishes daily through the openFDA drug shortages API¹. Counting each drug from the earliest date any of its presentations was posted, to Nov. 3, 2026, the median current shortage is 1,708 days old, about four years and eight months. The mean is 2,029 days, or 5.6 years, pulled up by a handful of entries from 2012.

Those numbers measure how long open shortages have lasted so far, which is a different thing from how long a shortage lasts. Every entry below is still running, so each age is a minimum. This piece shows the full distribution, which kinds of listings are oldest, what the few recently resolved entries looked like, and what suppliers' own recovery estimates imply. Our companion piece on the longest-running drug shortages names the oldest 20.

The distribution

Source: GxRadar analysis of openFDA drug shortage records as of Oct. 30, 2026, ages counted to Nov. 3, 2026. "Injections" counts drugs with an injectable form listed.

Quartiles fall at 3.3, 4.7 and 7.7 years. Put another way, a quarter of today's shortages were posted more than seven and a half years ago, and three-quarters more than three years ago.

The shape is lumpy because the list's history is. Eleven current entries were first posted in 2022 and 17 in 2023, the years FDA's report to Congress for 2023³ described as strained by demand from COVID-19, RSV and flu, with 49 and 55 new shortages respectively. Since then, few new entries have arrived. FDA counted 15 new shortages in 2024 in its 2024 report⁴ and four in 2025 in its 2025 report⁵. With few additions and few exits, the list ages a year every year.

Which listings are oldest

Source: GxRadar analysis of openFDA records as of Oct. 30, 2026. Reason and availability are the values given most often across a drug's presentations. Reasons with three or fewer drugs are omitted. Pediatric drug shortages looks at the 17 drugs with FDA's Pediatric tag.

Injectables are both the majority and the oldest group. That matches what FDA's 2019 root-causes report⁶ found for drugs entering shortage from 2013 to 2017: 63 percent were sterile injectables, with a median of almost 35 years since first approval. GxRadar's Why sterile injectables dominate shortage lists explains why they are slow to recover.

By reason, the oldest group is "Other," which tells a reader nothing. FDA's FAQ² lists the reasons the law allows, from good manufacturing practice problems to demand increases, and "Other" is the most common on the current list.

Availability does not track age the way one might guess. Listings where most presentations are marked unavailable are younger, at a median of 3.7 years, than those where most are available. FDA's FAQ² says a presentation marked available does not mean the shortage is over, and a drug can sit on the list for years with partial supply.

What resolved entries looked like

Five entries in FDA's data were marked resolved as of Oct. 30, 2026. The agency's records give a last-update date, which GxRadar uses here as an approximate end point.

Source: openFDA drug shortage records as of Oct. 30, 2026.

Five is too few to call a pattern. The openFDA data held only 19 resolved presentation records on Nov. 3, all for these five drugs and all last updated between July and September 2026, so the dataset is no archive of past episodes. Published studies that tracked complete episodes found shorter typical durations than the current list suggests. A 2024 study of code-cart drugs⁷ using University of Utah Drug Information Service data found a mean of 18.2 months for 61 resolved shortages from 2001 to 2022. A 2018 study of sterile solutions⁸ such as saline and dextrose found a mean of 13.9 months for 22 resolved shortages.

Both studies also found long tails. The code-cart study's longest active shortage was atropine injection, at 165 months by the end of 2022. The sterile-solutions study reported a dextrose and saline mixture in shortage since October 2007. FDA's 2019 report⁶ put it plainly: shortages "have been lasting longer, in some cases more than 8 years."

If suppliers' estimates hold

Many listings carry notes from manufacturers giving a next delivery or estimated recovery. Taking those dates at face value gives a rough total length for some of today's entries.

Source: supplier notes in openFDA records as of Oct. 30, 2026; GxRadar calculation to the end of the stated month. FDA's FAQ² says manufacturer-provided information can change, and recovery estimates often slip.

Carboplatin, one of the drugs at the center of the 2023 cancer drug shortage, would come off at under four years. Most of the others would pass nine.

What the counts leave out

GxRadar's 69 differs from FDA's own count of ongoing shortages, which includes biologics and groups products its own way. FDA reported 98 ongoing shortages at the end of 2023, 113 at the end of 2024 and 93 at the end of 2025, according to its 2023³, 2024⁴ and 2025⁵ reports. The 2025 report said shortages "often persist due to market conditions," including "lack of incentives for firms to manufacture older, less profitable products."

FDA's data also carry dates that need care. Two current entries share a first-posted date of Jan. 1, 2012, and openFDA's documentation¹ says the dataset begins in 2012, so those are floors. And the list's separate category of drugs to be discontinued, 161 entries as of Oct. 30, 2026, is young: 124 of them were first posted in 2026. Those are notices of products leaving the market, which may or may not become shortages.

GxRadar recalculates these ages as FDA updates its data. The current list is on our shortage tracker, and How FDA tracks drug shortages explains how entries are added and closed.