Animal Caretakers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Animal Caretakers worker at that point in the distribution, so $37,160 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 277,300 Animal Caretakers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.18% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Kentucky, where the location quotient is 1.95, meaning the occupation holds 1.95 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 26,200 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 24.0% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $24,500 or less, and one in ten earns $46,480 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $21,980. The mean ($34,750) versus median ($33,470) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Animal Caretakers runs from the $38,400 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (26,200 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Animal Caretakers stands number 129 by employment and number 815 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Personal Care and Service Occupations, the group median wage is $37,320 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 10% less than its group median, and it supplies 8.8% of the group's 3,159,920 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $33,470, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 10,920 jobs, 3.9% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 384 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, El Paso, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $28,510 a year, against $46,430 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Animal Caretakers paycheck, gross, is $1,287 every two weeks on an annual $33,470, which is $2,789 a month and $644 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($28,870) to the 75th ($37,160) is worth $8,290 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $36,817 would sit between the median ($33,470) and the 75th percentile ($37,160), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $28,870, is $4,600 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers, First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers, First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services, Gambling Dealers, Residential Advisors, Skincare Specialists. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.