Occupation / job
Veterinarians
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
How many people are qualified for this, and how many are doing it
The pay figure above only describes people who got the job. This is the part it leaves out.
There are 133,475 veterinarians in the United States (2025). Federal employment records account for 83,900 people working in Veterinarians — 62.9%.
The remainder is a ceiling, not an unemployment rate. Holding the credential is not the same as wanting a job with it, and the remainder also holds everyone who moved into management or teaching, retired without giving the credential up, or works self-employed in a way the employment survey misses. What the pair does establish is that the pay figure above is a survivor's figure, and roughly how many people it is silent about. Everything else that gap contains
Denominator: veterinarians in the United States = 133,475 (Standing count of people holding the credential, as at 31 December 2025) · AVMA, US veterinarian numbers (market research statistics) · view
Who this suits
The $130,100 midpoint is $6,673 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Veterinarians near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
Employment stands at 83,900. Veterinarians is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
This work suits people prepared to spend years qualifying for a scope of practice they then hold for the rest of a career, with the accountability that comes attached to it.
We carry no verified training length for Veterinarians — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $101,460 and a quarter above $166,120: a 1.6x ratio, $64,660 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.
The 25th percentile is $101,460, $51,440 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you cannot do nights, cannot carry medico-legal exposure, or need to be finished thinking about work when the shift ends.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 83,900 people employed as Veterinarians; 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 $130,100 as where you might be after years in Veterinarians, and $101,460 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $101,460 and $166,120. That is $64,660 of range, with $130,100 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $166,120, the 75th percentile, is worth $36,020 a year more than the $130,100 midpoint and $64,660 more than the $101,460 a quarter of Veterinarians settle for.
The climb from $130,100 to $166,120 is $36,020; the drop to $101,460 is $28,640. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Veterinarians and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $62.54 at the midpoint for Veterinarians, $48.77 at the 25th percentile and $79.86 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 Veterinarians for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $130,100 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $130,100 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Veterinarians, 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