Occupation / job
Animal Caretakers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A median of $35,360 against the $50,020 all-occupation figure leaves Animal Caretakers 29% behind — $14,660 across a year. Whether that is workable depends almost entirely on where you would be doing it.
266,910 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.
Animal care suits people who understand that the client is the owner and the patient is not, and who are physically comfortable with animals that are frightened.
How long it takes to become one of the 266,910 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
The quarters sit at $29,820 and $40,050, $852 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
Under $29,820 is where a quarter of this field sits, $20,200 beneath the $50,020 a typical American job pays. The risk in Animal Caretakers is not the average outcome, it is how long you might spend in the bottom quarter before leaving it.
Avoid it if the bite, scratch and euthanasia realities of animal work would be more than you can carry.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 266,910 people employed as Animal Caretakers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x ratio from $29,820 to $40,050 makes $35,360 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
In cash terms the middle half of Animal Caretakers runs $29,820 to $40,050 — $10,230 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $35,360.
The 75th percentile is $40,050. Reaching it from the $35,360 midpoint is $4,690 a year; reaching it from the $29,820 that the bottom quarter of Animal Caretakers earn is $10,230.
There is $5,540 between $29,820 and $35,360, and $4,690 between $35,360 and $40,050. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Animal Caretakers at the bottom of it.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $17.00 at the midpoint for Animal Caretakers, $14.33 at the 25th percentile and $19.25 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Animal Caretakers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $35,360 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $35,360 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else