An animal care technician is a hands-on animal caretaker job title — used mainly by animal shelters, research facilities and some hospitals — for the person who feeds, cleans, monitors and handles animals, with no credential required.
It is an employer title rather than a federal occupation: the Bureau of Labor Statistics has no "animal care technician" category, and the work falls under broader caretaker groupings.
Here is what the job involves, where it leads, and what it pays.
What is an animal care technician?
Start with what the title is and is not: "animal care technician" is an employer title, not a federal occupation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no "animal care technician" category.
Shelters, municipal animal services departments and research facilities use the title for the non-credentialed staff who feed, clean, monitor and handle animals — and federal data folds that work into two broader occupations depending on the setting.
In shelters and kennel-style facilities, the work sits inside Animal Caretakers (SOC 39-2021), which BLS defines as workers who "feed, water, groom, bathe, exercise, or otherwise provide care" to pets and other animals not raised for consumption — a code that also spans boarding kennels, zoos, circuses and aquariums.
BLS's own name for the shelter version of the job is the animal shelter attendant, working typically with cats and dogs in shelters or rescue leagues, and VeterinaryHires' industry research notes that BLS files kennel staff under the same caretakers code.
In research facilities, the same work is counted somewhere else entirely: SOC 31-9096, Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers — a combined occupation that sits explicitly outside the animal caretakers code.
That split decides which pay figures describe the job, so it runs through the rest of this page.
The clearest real-world example of the title in action is municipal: the City of Los Angeles uses Animal Care Technician (class code 4310) as a civil-service shelter title, with its own exam, requirements and career ladder.
What does an animal care technician do each day?
Day to day, the job is husbandry: keep animals fed, watered, clean and watched.
On the kennel side, BLS describes attendants who care for pets in place of owners — cleaning cages and dog runs, feeding, exercising and playing with animals, often overnight.
The shelter version adds the public-facing half.
BLS's shelter attendants care for animals' basic needs and may also keep records, answer questions from the public, educate visitors about pet health and screen people who want to adopt an animal.
Los Angeles' hiring information sheet for the title is unusually specific about the physical side: crawling into cages to clean them, lifting and controlling animals that may be unruly, lifting feed sacks that may weigh between 50 and 100 pounds, cleaning waste and carcasses, working outdoors in all weather, and possible exposure to zoonotic diseases — the ones that pass between animals and people.
The work also has a hard edge.
Shelter workers may see abused, injured or sick animals, and some caretakers may have to help veterinarians euthanize animals — worth walking in clear-eyed rather than discovering mid-shift.
The schedule is not nine to five
Where animal care technicians work: shelters, research labs, hospitals and zoos
The title turns up in four kinds of workplace: animal shelters and municipal animal services, research facilities and universities, animal hospitals and clinics with kennel wards, and — under the broader caretakers code the title sits in — zoos and aquariums.
The federal industry data shows where the weight falls.
BLS counted 266,910 wage-and-salary animal caretaker jobs nationally in the May 2025 OEWS.
The biggest employer is other personal services — the industry group covering pet care such as grooming and boarding — with 146,190 jobs.
Next come other professional, scientific and technical services, the group containing veterinary services, at 34,170; other miscellaneous retailers such as pet stores at 32,480; social advocacy organizations — the group that includes animal welfare nonprofits — at 10,170; and museums, historical sites and similar institutions, which covers zoos and aquariums, at 8,250.
BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook shares for the occupation tell the same story: other personal services 40%, self-employed 25%, professional, scientific and technical services 10%, retail trade 9%, arts, entertainment and recreation 5%.
Only the 10% slice works in the industry group that contains vet clinics.
Research-side animal care technicians are counted in the other code entirely.
SOC 31-9096 covers workers who feed, water and examine pets and other nonfarm animals for signs of illness, disease or injury in laboratories and animal hospitals and clinics, and BLS describes its settings as clinics and animal hospitals, colleges and universities, and research laboratories.
Geography matters too: the states with the most animal caretaker jobs are California (25,710), Texas (20,450), Florida (17,210), New York (12,470) and Illinois (11,070).
Inside veterinary services itself — the animal hospitals and clinics — animal caretakers held 33,720 jobs, 7.2% of the industry's employment, at a median of $32,150 (May 2025).
That is the clinic slice of the caretakers code: kennel wards, in-house boarding and the like.
Animal care technician vs kennel attendant vs vet tech
Animal care technician and kennel attendant overlap heavily — for the same tier of non-credentialed husbandry work, shelters, municipal systems and research facilities say "animal care technician" where boarding operations say "kennel attendant."
Kennel attendant is BLS's description: caring for pets, often overnight in place of owners, cleaning cages and dog runs, feeding, exercising and playing with animals.
Animal care technician is the version of the title shelters, municipal systems and research facilities tend to use.
For shelter-side jobs, both land in the same federal caretakers code — VeterinaryHires notes BLS files kennel staff under animal caretakers — and on this site, animal care technician postings run through the kennel attendant category.
The kennel attendant guide covers that job in its own right: the boarding reality, the settings breakdown and the overnight schedule.
Vet tech is the bigger gap.
Veterinary technicians usually need a 2-year associate's degree from a veterinary technology program — technologists, a 4-year bachelor's — and typically must pass a credentialing exam and become registered, licensed or certified, depending on the state.
AAVSB administers the Veterinary Technician National Exam (VTNE), and its wording is that most states and provinces require a passing score for a technician to be credentialed.
An animal care technician needs none of that: the entry bar is a high school diploma and on-the-job training.
Pay closes the comparison: the median for veterinary technologists and technicians was $47,380 in May 2025, against $35,360 for the caretakers grouping and $38,150 for the combined assistants-and-lab-caretakers code.
What separates the roles is the education and the credential — and the legal scope that comes with the credential.
| Animal care technician | Kennel attendant | Veterinary technician | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry bar | High school diploma, on-the-job training | High school diploma, on-the-job training | 2-year associate's degree (technologists: 4-year) |
| Credential | None | None | Typically the VTNE plus a state R/L/C credential |
| Settings | Shelters, municipal animal services, research facilities, clinic kennel wards, zoos | Boarding kennels, clinic kennel wards | Private clinics and animal hospitals; may also work in labs, colleges and universities, and humane societies |
| BLS grouping | SOC 39-2021, or 31-9096 in research | SOC 39-2021 | SOC 29-2056 |
| Median pay (May 2025) | $35,360 (39-2021) · $38,150 (31-9096) | Read from the 39-2021 series | $47,380 |
What an animal care technician may legally do is a state-by-state question
What do you need to get hired?
The entry bar is low and plainly stated.
BLS: animal care and service workers typically have a high school diploma or equivalent and learn the occupation on the job, and many employers prefer to hire people who have experience with animals.
Experience is the actual currency — shelter volunteering, fostering, farm or pet-sitting work all give an application something to point at.
Public shelter systems hire through civil-service exams and eligible lists, and the requirements are more concrete.
Los Angeles' Animal Care Technician exam — as described in a December 2022 Animal Services report, for that administration — required 1,040 hours of paid or volunteer experience caring for companion animals including dogs, cats or rabbits, or 3 semester units (4 quarter units) in animal health or animal care.
Two lessons travel: volunteer hours can count toward a paid municipal job, and requirements can change with each administration of the exam, so read the current bulletin rather than an old one.
Free training exists for the shelter route: Fear Free's Shelter Program is free for all shelter, rescue and animal welfare employees and volunteers, which makes it an easy add to a resume at exactly this tier.
For the no-experience version of this question — what each entry-level animal job actually screens for — see how to get a vet job with no experience.
How much do animal care technicians make?
There is no single honest answer, because BLS publishes no animal-care-technician wage at all — and no separate figure for laboratory animal technicians either.
The title spans two federal groupings, and each has its own numbers.
Read the grouping that matches the employer.
Shelter, kennel and clinic-kennel side (SOC 39-2021).
The May 2025 OEWS median for animal caretakers is $35,360 a year.
The middle half earn between $29,820 and $40,050; the bottom tenth $27,250 or less; the top tenth $50,060 or more.
Hourly, the median is $17.00, with the middle half between $14.34 and $19.26 and the top tenth at $24.07 or more.
The mean was $17.94 an hour, or $37,300 a year, across 266,910 wage-and-salary jobs.
Setting moves that number less than you might expect.
BLS's industry medians for caretakers run $37,460 in arts, entertainment and recreation, $35,290 in retail trade, $35,190 in other personal services, and $33,350 in professional, scientific and technical services — the group containing veterinary services.
Inside veterinary services itself, the caretaker median is $32,150.
A clinic setting does not lift pay in this code; it sits below the caretakers median for all industries combined.
Research side (SOC 31-9096).
The combined veterinary assistant and laboratory animal caretaker median is $38,150 a year, and the research signal sits in the industry medians: $49,230 in scientific research and development services and $47,860 in educational services, against $37,930 in veterinary services.
Within the code, the research and university medians sit well above the veterinary services one.
Geography, for the caretakers code: the highest state medians are District of Columbia $44,210, Washington $40,570, Hawaii $40,130, Massachusetts $39,650 and California $38,700; the lowest are Mississippi $26,970, Louisiana $27,910 and Alabama $28,330.
For the full percentile table on that code, the kennel attendant salary page breaks down the same federal series.
Two federal groupings, no "animal care technician salary"
Career path: vet assistant, lab animal technician or credentialed tech
The experience leads somewhere in every direction this job exists.
Up the municipal ladder.
Los Angeles' career ladder for the title runs from Animal Care Technician (4310) to Animal Care Technician Supervisor (4313), with a lateral move to Animal Control Officer (4311).
Other cities run their own classifications; LA's shows the shape — technician to supervisor, with animal control as the lateral.
Into the clinic.
Veterinary assistant work is the clinical step up from husbandry, and BLS says certification is not mandatory for it — most veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers have a high school diploma or equivalent and learn on the job.
The veterinary assistant guide covers the role, and kennel attendant to veterinary assistant in 12 months maps the move month by month — same tier of starting work, one step clinical.
Into research.
Research-side animal care technicians are laboratory animal caretakers (SOC 31-9096), and the field's certification ladder is AALAS: Assistant Laboratory Animal Technician (ALAT), Laboratory Animal Technician (LAT) and Laboratory Animal Technologist (LATG).
ALAT eligibility runs from 2 years of lab animal work experience with no education requirement, to a high school diploma plus 1 year, to an associate or bachelor's degree plus 6 months.
Husbandry experience outside a lab is not wasted: AALAS credits it — up to 3 years of non-lab work — at 6 months of non-lab work for every 1 month of lab experience.
One honest note on the research route: BLS says veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers have one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations.
To the credentialed tech route.
The veterinary technician path usually runs through a veterinary technology program and the VTNE — 2 years for the associate's-level route, 4 for technologists — plus the credentialing exam and the state's registration, license or certification, depending on the state.
For how this same work looks on the credentialed side of the shelter and lab worlds, see shelter and lab animal vet tech careers.
Find animal care technician jobs
On VeterinaryHires, animal care technician postings run through the kennel attendant category, so that is where the openings live: browse open kennel attendant and animal care jobs.
The scale, as of October 22, 2026: VeterinaryHires listed 13,218 live veterinary job openings, 318 of them kennel attendant openings.
The site does not publish a separate animal-care-technician count.
The outlook behind those listings is solid for this tier of work.
BLS projects 12% employment growth for animal caretakers from 2025 to 2035, and — across the wider animal care and service worker group, which adds animal trainers to the caretakers — an average of 69,400 openings a year over the decade.
Before applying, weigh the two things that decide whether the job works: the schedule and the physical demands.
And when an offer arrives, check which pay grouping the employer belongs to — it tells you which market the number comes from.