Animal Caretakers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for animal caretakers. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $44,210. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $33,341 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $44,210 median for animal caretakers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $33,341. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$35,360
People doing it
266,910
Highest paid
$44,210
DC
Best off, really
$33,341
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,250
Highest tenth
$50,060
Lowest, really
$26,144
GA
States with data
51
National average
$37,300
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $26,144 and $33,341. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 266,910 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $35,360. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $35,360 in the middle.
- Wages for animal caretakers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $26,144 to $33,341. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in animal caretakers is 266,910 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report animal caretakers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Animal Caretakers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,250 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,360 |
| Top tenth earn over | $50,060 |
| This salary | $35,360 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Animal Caretakers
The national median for this job
$35,360around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,250 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,360 |
| Top tenth | $50,060 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Animal Caretakers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $26,970 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $44,210 |
| Spread | $17,240 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $32,730 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $33,682 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $34,040 | $29,531 | $33,341 |
| DC | $44,210 | $36,216 | $32,685 |
| WA | $40,570 | $34,778 | $32,035 |
| AZ | $38,180 | $32,306 | $31,953 |
| MT | $34,210 | $28,817 | $31,932 |
| ME | $37,230 | $30,846 | $31,768 |
| NM | $33,570 | $28,677 | $31,728 |
| VT | $36,090 | $30,226 | $31,278 |
| AK | $36,640 | $31,620 | $31,087 |
| CO | $37,430 | $31,316 | $30,890 |
| MN | $36,430 | $30,321 | $30,809 |
| RI | $37,120 | $31,034 | $30,602 |
| SD | $30,390 | $26,598 | $30,193 |
| HI | $40,130 | $32,768 | $30,170 |
| UT | $34,750 | $28,555 | $30,058 |
| CT | $37,310 | $31,045 | $29,940 |
| MA | $39,650 | $32,376 | $29,912 |
| AR | $30,230 | $25,810 | $29,835 |
| NE | $31,680 | $26,877 | $29,739 |
| ID | $32,170 | $27,177 | $29,726 |
| IL | $35,570 | $29,145 | $29,482 |
| TX | $32,730 | $28,479 | $29,306 |
| MD | $36,780 | $30,349 | $29,192 |
| MO | $31,230 | $26,743 | $29,144 |
| IA | $30,080 | $25,818 | $29,085 |
| SC | $31,280 | $26,990 | $28,966 |
| CA | $38,700 | $32,592 | $28,950 |
| NY | $37,840 | $31,138 | $28,932 |
| TN | $30,550 | $26,727 | $28,889 |
| OH | $30,310 | $26,417 | $28,773 |
| KY | $30,720 | $25,906 | $28,635 |
| FL | $34,150 | $29,620 | $28,631 |
| NH | $34,790 | $30,134 | $28,605 |
| VA | $34,380 | $28,588 | $28,376 |
| DE | $33,910 | $28,112 | $28,323 |
| WY | $29,080 | $25,546 | $28,119 |
| NJ | $35,850 | $30,446 | $27,962 |
| OK | $28,940 | $24,631 | $27,900 |
| NC | $30,870 | $26,261 | $27,896 |
| WI | $30,160 | $25,780 | $27,691 |
| OR | $36,580 | $28,921 | $27,618 |
| IN | $29,990 | $25,422 | $27,577 |
| KS | $29,830 | $24,772 | $27,536 |
| NV | $30,320 | $26,542 | $27,369 |
| LA | $27,910 | $24,143 | $27,328 |
| WV | $28,550 | $24,438 | $27,223 |
| PA | $31,360 | $26,415 | $27,092 |
| MI | $30,320 | $25,504 | $27,079 |
| AL | $28,330 | $23,768 | $26,418 |
| MS | $26,970 | $22,833 | $26,157 |
| GA | $29,860 | $25,281 | $26,144 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of animal caretakers earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $35,360.
- Take-home figures for animal caretakers assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $36,216.
- The price adjustment for animal caretakers uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Georgia anchors the bottom at $26,144. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for animal caretakers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $35,360, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Take-home calculations for animal caretakers assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $36,216, in the District of Columbia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for animal caretakers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.