To study the influence of shear deformation on the stability of circular hollow pier, taking the circular hollow pier as the medium thick shell structure, considering the axial symmetry of the structure and load, the differential equation for axisymmetric deformation of the circular hollow pier with the influence of shear deformation was established, which was in accordance with the differential equation of the Timoshenko beam on the Winkler foundation. When the influence of shear deformation was not considered, the differential equation can be reduced to the differential equation of Bernoulli-Euler beam on Winkler foundation. The characteristic solution of the differential equation was solved, and the transcendental equation of the local instability of the pier was derived from the boundary condition of the hollow pier. By changing the structural parameters such as the height, radius and wall thickness of the pier, the critical load value of axisymmetric instability and the value of the critical load on the overall instability were compared and analyzed. The results were compared with those obtained without considering the effect of shear deformation, it can be seen that the axisymmetric instability is preceded to the overall instability under the specific parameters of the parameter, and the influence of the shear deformation can not be ignored.