Veterinarian Salary in Georgia

Georgia's median sits $3,510 below the national median of $130,100, a gap of 3%; the hourly median tells the same story at $60.86 against $62.55, also 3% lower.

Move away from the middle and the picture splits.

At the 25th percentile Georgia is actually $1,620, or 2%, above the national figure of $101,460 — the lower-middle of the Georgia range holds up.

But the floor and the ceiling both trail: the Georgia 10th percentile is $66,710, 10% below the national $73,920, and the gap widens sharply at the top, where the Georgia 90th percentile of $167,620 sits $48,080, or 22%, below the national 90th percentile of $215,700.

A veterinarian benchmarking a Georgia offer against the national top of the range would be comparing against a ceiling Georgia's distribution does not reach.

The middle half of Georgia veterinarians — the 25th to 75th percentile — earned between $103,080 and $155,270, a band $52,190 wide.

The same band nationally is $64,660 wide, so the Georgia spread is narrower even though the 25th percentile itself is higher than the national one.

From the 10th percentile ($66,710) to the 90th ($167,620), Georgia spans $100,910, against $141,780 nationally — again narrower, driven mostly by how far the Georgia 90th percentile trails the national one.

A narrower band means less room for a Georgia offer to sit far from the median in either direction, but OEWS does not publish why the shape differs, so this page does not attribute it to any particular kind of practice or setting.

BLS estimates 2,670 veterinarians were employed in Georgia, good for 9th among the 49 jurisdictions that publish a median — a notably higher standing than the state's 24th-place rank by median wage.

The figure is a headcount of people in jobs during the survey period, not a count of open positions, and it says nothing about how many roles are unfilled or how an employer's hiring process runs.

Read it only as a sign that Georgia supports a comparatively large veterinary workforce relative to its wage level.

Practising veterinary medicine in Georgia takes a license from the Georgia State Board of Veterinary Medicine, and the Board's rules close the usual shortcut for a veterinarian moving from another state: the Georgia Veterinary Practice Act does not provide for license by reciprocity, so every applicant sits the state's own Georgia Veterinary Law Exam alongside the NAVLE.

The Board's own rule sets a NAVLE bar of a score of 75 or greater — a figure on the older 0-100 scale rather than the 200-800 scale the exam now reports on, so confirm the current threshold with the Board.

Licenses renew every two years, expiring December 31 of even-numbered years, against 30 hours of continuing education per biennium.

Two narrow temporary licenses of six months each cover shelter and military families — the shelter one non-renewable, the military-family one renewable once — and neither substitutes for the full exam stack.

The full Georgia license requirements page covers each step with its citation.