Veterinarians
What the pay figures show
- California pays veterinarians the most, at $163,920. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $111,434 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- California leads for veterinarians at $163,920 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $111,434 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$130,100
People doing it
83,900
Highest paid
$163,920
CA
Best off, really
$111,434
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$73,920
Highest tenth
$215,700
Lowest, really
$80,816
SD
States with data
49
National average
$142,680
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $80,816 and $111,434. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Only 83,900 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 49 jurisdictions have a figure, with $130,100 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation for veterinarians is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $80,816 to $111,434. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in veterinarians is 83,900. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 49 jurisdictions carry a published median for veterinarians. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Veterinarians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $73,920 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $130,100 |
| Top tenth earn over | $215,700 |
| This salary | $130,100 |
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 Veterinarians
The national median for this job
$130,100around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $73,920 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $130,100 |
| Top tenth | $215,700 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Veterinarians, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Dakota · $88,650 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $163,920 |
| Spread | $75,270 |
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 | $131,330 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $135,148 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $160,510 | $120,975 | $111,434 |
| MD | $163,170 | $114,993 | $110,607 |
| AZ | $152,020 | $111,774 | $110,552 |
| LA | $124,370 | $92,928 | $105,188 |
| WV | $128,990 | $94,412 | $105,169 |
| NM | $129,390 | $94,695 | $104,767 |
| TN | $124,350 | $96,259 | $104,047 |
| IA | $124,610 | $92,314 | $103,995 |
| TX | $131,330 | $101,030 | $103,967 |
| NJ | $160,140 | $112,711 | $103,515 |
| OH | $125,060 | $94,022 | $102,407 |
| PA | $133,520 | $98,428 | $100,952 |
| NC | $129,240 | $94,954 | $100,865 |
| IN | $124,530 | $92,738 | $100,601 |
| NV | $125,550 | $97,079 | $100,103 |
| CA | $163,920 | $112,153 | $99,620 |
| VT | $131,820 | $94,731 | $98,029 |
| FL | $131,660 | $101,256 | $97,877 |
| MI | $125,390 | $91,892 | $97,566 |
| IL | $133,580 | $96,101 | $97,214 |
| MN | $133,110 | $94,631 | $96,153 |
| SC | $122,130 | $89,345 | $95,887 |
| ME | $130,600 | $92,835 | $95,611 |
| UT | $123,990 | $90,496 | $95,257 |
| GA | $126,590 | $92,072 | $95,215 |
| CO | $130,840 | $95,647 | $94,343 |
| NH | $128,190 | $98,884 | $93,867 |
| AR | $107,710 | $81,077 | $93,722 |
| ID | $116,170 | $85,252 | $93,248 |
| MA | $140,260 | $100,441 | $92,796 |
| MO | $114,660 | $85,042 | $92,676 |
| RI | $126,570 | $93,117 | $91,821 |
| VA | $126,730 | $91,360 | $90,680 |
| MS | $105,370 | $78,835 | $90,312 |
| ND | $102,180 | $79,980 | $90,300 |
| CT | $126,190 | $91,195 | $87,951 |
| NY | $131,830 | $94,359 | $87,673 |
| AL | $105,630 | $78,745 | $87,523 |
| KS | $107,080 | $78,474 | $87,228 |
| KY | $104,100 | $78,538 | $86,814 |
| WI | $108,780 | $80,354 | $86,312 |
| NE | $103,500 | $77,637 | $85,904 |
| DC | $134,530 | $94,751 | $85,512 |
| WY | $97,240 | $77,238 | $85,019 |
| OR | $128,880 | $88,616 | $84,621 |
| HI | $130,120 | $91,755 | $84,482 |
| OK | $98,090 | $73,923 | $83,731 |
| MT | $99,390 | $74,496 | $82,550 |
| SD | $88,650 | $71,195 | $80,816 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of veterinarians 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 $130,100.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for veterinarians. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Washington keeps the most at $120,975.
- The price adjustment for veterinarians 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 — South Dakota anchors the bottom at $80,816. 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 veterinarians, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $130,100, 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.
- The household modeled for veterinarians is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Washington retains the most, $120,975. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for veterinarians 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.