Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers
What the pay figures show
- Rhode Island pays this job the most, at $49,770. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $40,157 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Rhode Island leads for veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers at $49,770 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $40,157 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
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$38,150
People doing it
126,580
Highest paid
$49,770
RI
Best off, really
$40,157
RI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,120
Highest tenth
$49,150
Lowest, really
$29,157
MS
States with data
51
National average
$40,340
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.41%
RI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $29,157 to $40,157. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- 126,580 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $38,150. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $38,150. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $29,157 through $40,157. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers is 126,580 — 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.
- Coverage for veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,120 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,150 |
| Top tenth earn over | $49,150 |
| This salary | $38,150 |
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 Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers
The national median for this job
$38,150around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,120 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,150 |
| Top tenth | $49,150 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $30,360 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Rhode Island · $49,770 |
| Spread | $19,410 |
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 | $34,850 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $35,863 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| RI | $49,770 | $40,724 | $40,157 |
| ME | $45,510 | $36,995 | $38,101 |
| MN | $45,280 | $36,959 | $37,553 |
| ND | $37,160 | $32,038 | $36,172 |
| DC | $49,080 | $39,837 | $35,953 |
| WY | $37,880 | $32,617 | $35,902 |
| MT | $38,340 | $31,941 | $35,394 |
| NJ | $46,160 | $38,267 | $35,145 |
| NM | $37,500 | $31,666 | $35,034 |
| MD | $44,770 | $36,390 | $35,002 |
| MA | $46,670 | $37,666 | $34,799 |
| CT | $44,250 | $35,994 | $34,713 |
| WA | $44,150 | $37,655 | $34,685 |
| ID | $37,530 | $31,200 | $34,126 |
| SD | $34,700 | $30,061 | $34,124 |
| CA | $46,260 | $38,364 | $34,077 |
| IA | $35,720 | $30,135 | $33,949 |
| TN | $36,320 | $31,363 | $33,901 |
| OH | $36,340 | $31,096 | $33,869 |
| SC | $36,980 | $31,456 | $33,759 |
| NY | $44,750 | $36,317 | $33,744 |
| AR | $34,570 | $29,136 | $33,681 |
| MO | $36,660 | $30,851 | $33,620 |
| NE | $36,100 | $30,247 | $33,468 |
| MI | $37,960 | $31,318 | $33,252 |
| WI | $36,850 | $30,826 | $33,111 |
| OK | $34,850 | $29,114 | $32,977 |
| IN | $36,420 | $30,399 | $32,976 |
| OR | $44,370 | $34,499 | $32,944 |
| NC | $37,070 | $30,995 | $32,925 |
| NV | $36,920 | $31,845 | $32,837 |
| HI | $44,070 | $35,651 | $32,825 |
| AL | $35,800 | $29,426 | $32,707 |
| KS | $35,680 | $29,146 | $32,398 |
| UT | $37,560 | $30,688 | $32,303 |
| VT | $37,290 | $31,150 | $32,234 |
| AZ | $38,250 | $32,360 | $32,006 |
| CO | $38,900 | $32,433 | $31,991 |
| DE | $38,610 | $31,627 | $31,865 |
| PA | $37,140 | $30,882 | $31,674 |
| KY | $34,140 | $28,534 | $31,541 |
| FL | $37,830 | $32,576 | $31,489 |
| TX | $34,850 | $30,182 | $31,059 |
| AK | $36,490 | $31,500 | $30,969 |
| IL | $37,480 | $30,585 | $30,939 |
| GA | $35,850 | $29,795 | $30,812 |
| VA | $37,450 | $30,878 | $30,649 |
| WV | $32,350 | $27,372 | $30,490 |
| NH | $36,910 | $31,837 | $30,222 |
| LA | $30,480 | $26,143 | $29,591 |
| MS | $30,360 | $25,452 | $29,157 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $38,150 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for this job 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 Rhode Island, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $40,724.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Mississippi, on $29,157.
- All wage figures for veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $38,150. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Take-home calculations for veterinary assistants and laboratory 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 $40,724, in Rhode Island. 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 results for veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Mississippi anchors the distribution at $29,157. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.