Occupation / job
Animal Trainers
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
Animal Trainers pays $39,990 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $10,030 a year short, or $4.82 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
Employment as Animal Trainers is 18,770 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
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 18,770 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
A quarter earn below $33,740 and a quarter above $53,580: a 1.6x ratio, $19,840 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
Under $33,740 is where a quarter of this field sits, $16,280 beneath the $50,020 a typical American job pays. The risk in Animal Trainers 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 18,770 people employed as Animal Trainers; 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 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $39,990 as where you might be after years in Animal Trainers, and $33,740 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $33,740 and $53,580. That is $19,840 of range, with $39,990 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $53,580. Reaching it from the $39,990 midpoint is $13,590 a year; reaching it from the $33,740 that the bottom quarter of Animal Trainers earn is $19,840.
The upper half of the middle range — $39,990 to $53,580, or $13,590 — is far longer than the lower half at $6,250. In a shape like this an average would flatter Animal Trainers considerably, and would describe nobody.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Animal Trainers is $19.22 an hour. The quarters sit at $16.22 and $25.75, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $39,990 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $39,990 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Animal Trainers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else