What Should You Pay a Kennel Attendant? An Employer Pay Guide by Market

Typical offer range nationally: entry, median, experienced

BLS has no kennel-attendant occupation.

The nearest row in the federal wage tables is animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021) — a code that also covers groomers, kennel staff and shelter attendants — and VeterinaryHires notes that the rows it shows for roles without their own BLS occupation are the closest BLS occupations.

Read the numbers below as the frame, then price against postings in your own metro.

Per the BLS OEWS May 2025 release, animal caretakers across all industries earned hourly percentiles of $13.10 (10th), $14.34 (25th), $17.00 (median), $19.26 (75th) and $24.07 (90th).

Inside veterinary services (NAICS 541940) — the industry row you actually hire in, with 33,720 jobs — the same occupation runs $11.20, $13.65, $15.46, $17.75 and $21.63.

Read the percentiles as roles, not just rankings.

The 25th is a new hire learning your protocols, the median is an attendant you can leave alone with a ward, and the 75th is the senior who trains new hires and owns the boarding calendar.

The 10th percentile is a floor case, not a target — in higher-minimum-wage states it sits below a rate you are permitted to advertise, so never set a start rate under your state or local minimum wage.

Then check what your market actually posts.

On VeterinaryHires, kennel attendant listings stating pay had an employer median of $15.00 an hour across 65 employers on October 6, 2026.

Three caveats travel with that figure: it is an advertised rate, not earnings; bonuses are excluded unless the employer folds them into the posted range; and listings on a job board are not a random sample of all kennel jobs.

The employer-median method takes each employer's own median first, so a group posting hundreds of openings still counts once.

Pay is one decision in the hire.

Before you write the number, make sure the role itself is scoped and screened well — our guide to how to hire a kennel attendant covers the rest of the process.

How your state and metro shift the number

The federal percentiles are national; your floor is local.

California's state minimum wage is $16.90 an hour effective January 1, 2026, for employers not covered by a higher industry or local minimum, and Washington's 2026 minimum wage is $17.13 an hour.

In both states the legal floor sits above the $15.46 veterinary-services median and well above the $13.65 25th percentile — a percentile band that would be a mid-pack offer in a low-minimum state is under the wage law in these.

State-by-state figures for the occupation live on the career side: our kennel attendant pay by state page keeps that table, built on the same OEWS release.

Treat any statewide number as a blend.

A metro practice competes against that metro's retail, warehouse and food-service postings, not the state average, so pull three local ads in other hourly industries before you commit to a rate.

Between the legal floor and the metro market, practice-level facts move the number: how much boarding volume you run, whether the role includes overnight duty, and how much of the work is cleaning-and-feeding versus client-facing or clinical support.

The heavier your weekend and holiday coverage burden, the more the 75th percentile — not the median — is the figure to weigh in your offer.

What moves the number for this role

The applicant you want is likely fielding offers from other entry-level hourly jobs in the area — and within the animal world, the federal table shows animal caretakers' largest employing industry paying more than veterinary services does.

Animal caretakers in other personal services (NAICS 812900) earned a median of $16.92 an hour, and with 146,190 jobs that industry is the largest employer of this occupation in the May 2025 pull, against 33,720 in veterinary services.

If your posted rate sits visibly under the personal-services ads competing for the same applicants, your pipeline thins before you ever interview.

The other mover is the step above you.

On VeterinaryHires, veterinary assistant postings had an employer median of $19.00 an hour (298 employers) against $15.00 for kennel attendants (65) on October 6, 2026 — four dollars an hour between the two posted medians.

An attendant who can see a paid step up inside your hospital has a reason to stay; our kennel-to-assistant path guide walks through the move.

Weekend and holiday coverage is where kennel pay genuinely differs from most hourly work — and it is a number our research could not source: we found no primary source publishing typical lead, weekend or holiday premium figures for this role, so don't copy a percentage out of another practice's ad.

Size the premium from the postings and the boarding calendar in your own metro — and once you set one, it changes the overtime math in the next section.

Hourly vs salary and overtime exposure

Treat the role as hourly and non-exempt.

Under the FLSA, non-exempt employees must be paid at least 1.5 times their regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek, and federal law has no daily overtime rule — a schedule of six shorter days still owes overtime once the week crosses 40.

Whether your state layers additional daily rules on top is a question for your payroll provider or employment counsel.

This bites exactly where kennel work lives.

A holiday boarding week that adds a Saturday turn and a few long days pushes a 40-hour schedule over the threshold, and the extra hours are owed at time and a half.

Budget the overtime into the holiday staffing plan instead of assuming the schedule will absorb it.

And if you pay a weekend or shift premium, it must be included in the regular rate the overtime is computed from — whether you pay it as a percent of base or as an add-on of cents per hour.

Can you put the role on a salary instead?

A salary alone does not make an employee exempt: the FLSA allows paying a non-exempt employee a salary as long as the proper overtime premium is also paid.

Some states set their own thresholds — in Washington, for example, the 2026 exempt salary threshold is $1,541.70 per week ($80,168.40 a year), tied to its $17.13 minimum wage.

Hourly non-exempt is the reasoned default for this role; confirm the classification for your specific roles with employment counsel.

California adds one wrinkle: under the state's wage-order index, veterinary services without overnight shelter or feeding fall under IWC Order 4, while those that provide overnight shelter or feeding fall under Order 5.

Wage orders carry their own rules, so confirm which order covers your hospital before you finalize schedules and premiums.

The mechanics — regular rate, differentials, bonuses — are in our overtime and regular rate guide.

Benefits that substitute for base pay

When the base rate is capped by what boarding revenue supports, compete on the parts of the package that cost less per month than a raise does:

• Predictable schedules. Publish the roster further ahead than the retail and food-service employers you compete with, and honor it — for hourly staff juggling school or a second job, certainty is worth real money.
• A written ladder. Publish the criteria that move someone from the entry band to the senior kennel rate, and name the assistant rung as the visible next step.
• Premiums where it hurts. Weekend, holiday and overnight coverage is the burden unique to this role — a locally sized premium on those shifts beats an across-the-board raise you can't afford.
• Perks that fit kennel work. Staff pet care, decent gear, and a genuine break on double-coverage days.

None of this rescues an offer below the wage floor — the minimum wage is owed regardless of perks.

And keep the posting honest: an hourly applicant comparing three ads cannot compare "competitive pay" to a number, and on VeterinaryHires, listings that describe pay only in words like "competitive" or "DOE" count as not stating pay at all.

If you are setting rates for kennel, assistant and receptionist roles together, put them in one structure so the steps are deliberate — our guide to building pay bands walks through that.

Writing the pay line in the posting

State a number.

On October 6, 2026, 78.5% of veterinary listings on VeterinaryHires stated a pay rate or range (9,513 of 12,114 active listings) — and kennel attendant postings were among the least likely to, at 70.8% (228 of 322), behind veterinary assistants (85%) and technicians (83.4%).

In a role where most postings now carry a figure, the ad without one reads as the low offer.

In some places the figure is not optional.

VeterinaryHires counted fourteen states plus DC with a law requiring a pay range in job postings as of October 6, 2026: Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maine and Connecticut.

Employer-size thresholds vary by state: Colorado's rule reaches employers with 1+ employee in Colorado, New York's starts at 4+ employees, California's at 15+, Minnesota's at 30+ in Minnesota and Massachusetts' at 25+ in Massachusetts.

New York's law (Labor Law 194-b) requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges for advertised jobs, promotions and transfers, and to state whether a job is commission-based.

The gap is stark: on the same date, 92.6% of veterinary listings in pay-range-law states stated pay, versus 68.2% everywhere else.

Wherever you hire on a role this price-sensitive, put a real range in the ad.

If a job's pay is based on commission or piece rate, California requires a good-faith estimate of that range in the posting.

The state-by-state rules are in our guide to posting a pay range.

Write the line as the band you actually expect to pay: a start figure tied to your entry band, and a top figure you truly award for weekend-lead experience.

Keep the spread honest — an implausibly wide range reads as a low anchor with window dressing.

Our kennel attendant job description template shows where the pay line sits in a posting built to be answered.