Veterinarian Salary in California

California veterinarians earned more than the national figure at every published percentile, though the size of the lead changes shape across the range.

At the 10th percentile the gap is thin — just 1%, $74,850 against $73,920.

It widens through the middle — 24% at the 25th percentile ($125,460 vs $101,460) and 26% at the median ($163,920 vs $130,100) — and keeps widening past it: 28% at the 75th percentile ($211,840 vs $166,120) and 33% at the 90th, where California's $286,330 sits $70,630 above the national figure of $215,700.

A veterinarian benchmarking an offer against a national percentile should expect the California equivalent to run higher, and increasingly so toward the top of the range.

The middle half of California veterinarians — between the 25th and 75th percentiles — earned between $125,460 and $211,840, a band $86,380 wide, against $64,660 nationally.

From the 10th percentile ($74,850) to the 90th ($286,330), California spans $211,480, well beyond the national span of $141,780.

Inside that middle band, the median sits closer to the floor than the ceiling: $38,460 above the 25th percentile but $47,920 below the 75th.

A wider spread means a California offer has more room to land far from the median, in either direction, than a national one does.

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

BLS estimates that 9,170 veterinarians were employed in California, the largest count among the 49 jurisdictions that publish a median for the role — 1st by employment, the same rank California holds by median.

The figure is a headcount of people in jobs during the survey period.

It is not a count of open positions, and it says nothing about how quickly any one employer fills a role, so read it as the size of the profession in the state and nothing more.

Practising veterinary medicine in California takes a license from the California Veterinary Medical Board.

Every applicant files the same standard application: a degree from a board-recognized veterinary college or an ECFVG or PAVE certificate, the NAVLE, and the state's own open-book Veterinary Law Examination — unless you graduated from UC Davis or Western University.

There is no separate endorsement track; a five-year NAVLE recency rule with three refreshers does that work instead.

Renewal is biennial, backed by 36 hours of continuing education, and California has no temporary or relief license.

Those requirements hold the same wherever a job sits in the wage distribution; the full California license requirements page covers each step with its citation.