What a veterinarian earns, by metro

Median pay for veterinarians runs from $62,360 in Southwest Oklahoma nonmetropolitan area to $208,080 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont — a 3.34× range across 404 metropolitan areas. The national median of $130,100 sits inside that range but describes no particular market.

The band is wide — outcomes vary a lot

The top tenth of veterinarians earn $215,700 or more; the bottom tenth earn under $73,920. That is a 2.92× gap within the same occupation, in the same year. A spread this wide means the job title is not what determines pay — specialisation, employer type, seniority or book of business is. Expect the early years to sit near the bottom of the band rather than the middle, and treat the $130,100 median as a waypoint, not a destination.

Where the money is

5 of the ten best-paying metros for veterinarians are in CA. When one state dominates the top of the table like this, cost of living is doing part of the work but rarely all of it — state licensing rules, public-sector pay scales and the presence of a few large employers usually explain the rest. If you are comparing an offer in CA against one elsewhere, adjust for housing before concluding anything.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 29-1131. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 404 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 124 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.