Veterinarian Salary in Arkansas

At the median, Arkansas trails the national figure by $22,390, or 17% — $107,710 against $130,100.

The hourly comparison tells the same story: $51.79 against $62.55, also 17% below.

The gap is not uniform across the range.

The Arkansas 25th percentile is only 3% below the national 25th percentile, at $97,930 against $101,460, but the 10th percentile is 47% below its national counterpart — $38,870 against $73,920.

The 75th and 90th percentiles trail by 26% and 29%.

A veterinarian benchmarking an offer against the national median alone would miss how much lower the Arkansas floor sits.

The middle half of Arkansas veterinarians — between the 25th and 75th percentiles — earned between $97,930 and $122,140, a band $24,210 wide.

Nationally, the same band is $64,660 wide, more than double the Arkansas range.

From the 10th percentile ($38,870) to the 90th ($153,370), Arkansas spans $114,500, against $141,780 nationally.

Inside that tight middle band, the median of $107,710 sits closer to the 25th percentile than the 75th — $9,780 above the floor of the band against $14,430 below its ceiling.

A narrow middle band paired with a much lower 10th percentile means the middle half of the distribution sits close together while the bottom tenth sits far below it.

OEWS publishes the distribution, not the reasons behind it, so this page does not attribute the shape to any particular kind of practice.

BLS estimates 540 veterinarians employed in Arkansas, 37th of the 49 jurisdictions that publish a median by employment.

The figure counts people working as veterinarians during the survey period, not open positions — OEWS does not publish job openings.

A workforce of that size means the percentiles above describe a comparatively small group of veterinarians.

Read the employment figure as the size of the profession in Arkansas, and nothing more.

Practising veterinary medicine in Arkansas takes a license from the Arkansas Board of Animal Health, which sits inside the state's Department of Agriculture rather than a stand-alone veterinary board.

Every applicant files a $100 application carrying a NAVLE score form, then sits the Board's own Written State Board Examination — given once a year, typically in June — unless approved for licensure by endorsement under Ark.

Code Ann. § 17-101-303.

Licenses renew annually every March 31 against 20 hours of continuing education, and a $50 temporary permit covers practice before the state exam.

Those steps apply at every point in the wage distribution on this page; the full Arkansas license requirements page covers each one with its citation.