Veterinarian Salary in Tennessee

At the median, Tennessee trails the nation by $5,750, or 4%: $124,350 against $130,100.

The hourly median tells the same story, $59.78 against $62.55, also a 4% gap.

Move away from the middle and the picture flips.

The Tennessee 10th percentile is $98,500, 33% above the national 10th percentile of $73,920, and the 25th percentile is $104,890, 3% above the national 25th of $101,460.

The advantage reverses at the top: the 75th percentile is $151,770, 9% below the national 75th of $166,120, and the 90th percentile is $167,900, 22% below the national 90th of $215,700.

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

The middle half of Tennessee veterinarians — everyone between the 25th and 75th percentiles — earned between $104,890 and $151,770, a band $46,880 wide.

The same band nationally is $64,660 wide.

From the 10th percentile ($98,500) to the 90th ($167,900), Tennessee spans $69,400, against $141,780 nationally.

A narrower spread means a Tennessee offer has less room to sit far from the median in either direction than a national one does.

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

BLS estimates that 1,730 veterinarians were employed in Tennessee, 20th among the 49 jurisdictions that publish a median, so the percentiles on this page summarise a workforce of moderate size rather than a handful of practices.

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 Tennessee takes a license from the Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, reached either through the NAVLE examination route within five years of applying — with the passing score set by the NBVME rather than a state-published number — or by reciprocity from another state license in good standing.

No separate Tennessee jurisprudence exam appears anywhere in the current rule chapter, and foreign-trained graduates qualify through ECFVG, PAVE, or a Board-equivalent certification agency.

Continuing education runs 20 hours a year against a renewal cycle that comes due every two years, and a supervised temporary license covers three narrow bridge situations.

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