Veterinarian Salary in Alabama

At the median, Alabama veterinarians earned $105,630 against the national $130,100 — $24,470, or 19%, less.

The hourly median tells nearly the same story: $50.79 against $62.55, also 19% below.

That gap is not constant across the range.

It is smallest at the 25th percentile, where Alabama's $95,310 sits just 6% below the national $101,460, and larger at the 10th percentile, where Alabama's $65,430 is 11% below the national $73,920.

Above the median the gap stays wide: the Alabama 75th percentile is $136,690, 18% below the national $166,120, and the Alabama 90th percentile is $172,290, 20% below the national $215,700 — the widest gap in the distribution.

A veterinarian benchmarking an offer against the national 90th percentile would be comparing against a figure the Alabama distribution falls furthest short of.

The middle half of Alabama veterinarians — everyone between the 25th and 75th percentiles — earned between $95,310 and $136,690, a band $41,380 wide.

The same band nationally is $64,660 wide, so the Alabama middle half is compressed into a noticeably narrower range.

Within that band the median sits closer to the floor than the ceiling: $105,630 is $10,320 above the 25th percentile and $31,060 below the 75th.

From the 10th percentile ($65,430) to the 90th ($172,290), Alabama spans $106,860, against $141,780 nationally.

A tighter spread means an Alabama offer has less room to land far from the median in either direction than the national figures alone would suggest.

OEWS publishes the shape of the distribution, not what drives it, so this page does not attribute the narrower Alabama band to any particular kind of practice.

BLS estimates that 1,020 veterinarians were employed in Alabama, 27th among the 49 jurisdictions that publish a median — roughly the middle of the pack by headcount, even though Alabama's median wage ranks much lower, 41st of the same 49 jurisdictions.

The employment figure is a count of people in jobs during the survey period, not a count of open positions, and it says nothing about how quickly any employer fills a role.

Read it as the size of the profession in the state, and nothing more.

Practising veterinary medicine in Alabama takes a license from the Alabama State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners.

The route layers a written state examination on top of the NAVLE, with Alabama converting the national result to its own converted scale score of 70, and a veterinarian who has practiced on a license from an equivalent U.S. jurisdiction for the five years immediately before applying can pursue licensure without the written exam instead.

Licenses renew every December 31 against 20 hours of continuing education a year.

Those steps are the same wherever a job sits in the wage distribution; the full Alabama license requirements page covers each one with its citation.