What should you pay a laboratory animal technician? An employer pay guide by market
Anchor a laboratory animal technician offer on the research-facility tables, not the all-industry average.
In BLS OEWS May 2025 data, the blended occupation covering this work (SOC 31-9096) shows a median of $18.34 an hour across all industries — but $23.67 in scientific research and development and $23.01 in colleges and universities.
Here is how to turn those hourly percentiles into an offer range, and what to add for certification steps and shift coverage.
At a glance
BLS OEWS May 2025 · vet assistants + lab animal caretakers combined
All-industry median · SOC 31-9096
$18.34 / hr
NAICS 541700 · 1,260 employed
Scientific R&D median
$23.67 / hr
NAICS 611300 · 4,840 employed
Colleges & universities median
$23.01 / hr
scientific R&D services · same release
Research band, P10–P90
$18.49 – $31.05 / hr
The national offer range: entry, median, experienced
BLS has no wage series for laboratory animal technicians alone.
The federal occupation is SOC 31-9096 — veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers — one blended series, published hourly.
Across all industries, the May 2025 release puts the 10th percentile at $14.48 an hour, the 25th at $17.15, the median at $18.34, the 75th at $21.98 and the 90th at $23.63.
Read those points as offer roles: the 10th-to-25th zone is where a new hire with animal-care experience but no research track record starts, the median is a competent technician running day-to-day husbandry unsupervised, the 75th is an experienced or lead technician, and the 90th is the high end of the national distribution.
The catch is the blend: OEWS counts wage and salary jobs only and does not split clinic veterinary assistants from laboratory animal caretakers.
In the research industries below, the workers in this SOC are mostly lab animal caretakers — but treat every figure as the occupation, not the job title.
This page prices the role from the employer side.
The career-side read — annual figures, the state-by-state table, hourly rates — is on our laboratory animal technician salary page, and the role itself is covered in our lab animal technician career guide.
How your state and metro move the number
The medians above are national; your offer lives in a metro.
Before you set a band, pull your state and metropolitan rows for SOC 31-9096 from the same BLS release, and list the facilities you actually compete with: universities and medical schools, contract research organizations, pharma and biotech sites — and, for clinics, the practices within commuting distance.
When you read posted rates anywhere, read them for what they are: VeterinaryHires pay medians are advertised rates, not earnings — they exclude bonuses and production pay unless the employer folds them into the posted range, and job-board listings are not a random sample of all veterinary jobs.
Weight big employers correctly, too: VeterinaryHires' headline employer median takes each employer's own median first and the median across employers second, so an employer posting hundreds of openings counts once.
Do the same math when one university system dominates your local postings.
Then write the band down before you interview anyone.
Building pay bands is its own discipline, and a band you decided in advance keeps individual offers consistent.
What moves the number for this role
Industry moves the number sharply in the federal data.
Same release, same blended occupation: the median runs $18.34 across all industries, $18.24 in veterinary services, $23.01 in colleges, universities and professional schools, and $23.67 in scientific research and development services.
The top end spreads further — the 90th percentile is $23.63 nationally but $31.05 in scientific R&D.
The employment counts show how uneven the market is: veterinary services employ 113,130 people in this SOC, scientific R&D 1,260 and colleges and universities 4,840.
Your competing offers can come from institutions, not just clinics.
One caveat: OEWS industry estimates can exclude state and local government universities, so the $23.01 figure may not cover every public campus near you.
Certification is the mover with no verified pay figure behind it.
AALAS certifies laboratory animal technicians at three levels — ALAT, LAT and LATG — and no verified published figure says what any step adds to pay; AALAS salary survey results were not accessible for this guide, so we will not quote one.
Set the step from scope instead: write down what a LAT may do that an ALAT may not in your facility, and what a LATG takes off your supervisor's desk, then price those duty changes against the percentile rungs you already have.
A certification raise tied to documented scope survives scrutiny; one copied from a forum number does not.
The same honesty applies to premiums: no primary source publishes typical weekend, cagewash or lead premiums for this work.
Size them from postings and competing employers in your own metro, then apply them on a written schedule.
The rest of the funnel — screening, interviews, credential checks — is in our guide to how to hire a laboratory animal technician.
Hourly or salary — and what overtime exposure looks like
Quote the role hourly and plan on non-exempt treatment.
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 sets no daily overtime rule — a four-10 schedule that stays at 40 hours triggers no federal weekly overtime, but one long week of weekend coverage can.
Paying a salary does not by itself make an employee exempt — the FLSA allows a salaried non-exempt arrangement as long as overtime is also paid, so budget the overtime even for a salaried lead.
If you do classify a lead as exempt, the federal standard salary level is $684 per week ($35,568 a year) as of October 7, 2026, and a DOL technical amendment effective May 15, 2026 removed the vacated 2024 rule's text from the regulations, keeping the $684 level in place.
State thresholds can also differ from the federal one — Washington's 2026 exempt salary threshold is 2.25 times the state minimum wage for a 40-hour week regardless of employer size, and Colorado's 2026 threshold for exempt executive, administrative and professional employees is $1,111.23 per week ($57,784 rounded annual) under its 2026 PAY CALC Order — so treat non-exempt as the reasoned default and confirm classification with employment counsel.
Budget the add-ons into the rate, too: shift differentials must be included in the regular rate for overtime, whether paid as a percentage or as a cents-per-hour add-on.
Benefits that can substitute for base pay
If your band sits closer to the $18.34 all-industry median than the $23.67 research median, compete on what the package does that base pay cannot.
Decide which you will actually fund and name them in the posting next to the range: certification exam and renewal fees, paid study or exam time, scheduling that protects weekends, real leave, and cross-training that builds a résumé.
Funding the AALAS ladder is a high-leverage item, because it feeds the certification-step structure above: the technician who earns a LAT on your dime is the LAT you might otherwise try to recruit from a university facility at research rates.
Writing the pay line in the posting
State a real range.
On October 6, 2026, 78.5% of veterinary job listings on VeterinaryHires stated a pay rate or range — 9,513 of 12,114 active listings — and listings describing pay only as "competitive" or "DOE" count as not stating pay.
By role, stated-pay rates that day ran from 85% (veterinary assistant) down to 59.4% (relief veterinarian); laboratory animal technician postings are not tracked separately.
The law requires it in a specific set of states.
As of October 6, 2026, VeterinaryHires counted 14 states plus the District of Columbia with a law requiring a pay range in job postings: Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Hawaii, District of Columbia, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maine and Connecticut.
Employer-size thresholds vary — all employers in Maryland and Virginia, one employee in Colorado and Connecticut, 15 or more in California, four or more in New York, 50 or more in Hawaii.
Two specifics before you draft: New York State's Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges for advertised jobs, promotions and transfers, and to state when a job is commission-based.
California requires a posting whose pay is based on piece rate or commission to include a good-faith estimate of that range.
The pattern shows in the listings themselves: where a posting law was in force, 92.6% of veterinary listings stated pay on October 6, 2026; everywhere else, 68.2%.
Which states, which thresholds, and what counts as a compliant range — posting a pay range covers the details.
When you draft the ad, start from our laboratory animal technician job description template and write the pay line first.
Ways to structure the pay
Hourly base on the research-facility tables
Best for: every hire — the foundation the other structures sit on
Anchor on the industry table that matches your facility — the scientific R&D percentiles for CRO, pharma and biotech employers, the colleges-and-universities percentiles for campus facilities.
Start a new hire between P10 and the median; put an experienced technician at or above it.
Trade-off: The all-industry table ($18.34 median) blends clinic veterinary assistants into the number.
Anchor a research-facility offer on it and you may price below the research employers you compete with.
When to use: always — every structure below is this one plus something on top
FLSA: non-exempt employees must be paid at least 1.5 times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek; federal law sets no daily overtime rule.
Confirm classification for your specific role with employment counsel.
Certification-step raises (ALAT → LAT → LATG)
Best for: facilities that want to grow technicians through the AALAS ladder instead of buying experience
Document the duties that change at each step in your facility, then map each step to a rung in the band you already priced, based on those duty changes.
Publish the criteria with the band so the next raise is legible.
Trade-off: No figure for what each step adds was verified for this guide, so a step sized from a forum number is a guess.
Tie the raise to documented scope and it holds up.
When to use: when certification is the ladder your facility actually uses
Shift, weekend and assignment premiums
Best for: operations running evening, weekend or holiday husbandry coverage
Set flat hourly adders for defined shifts and less-desirable rotations — weekend husbandry, holiday cover, cagewash-heavy assignments — sized from postings and competing employers in your own metro, since our research found no published typical figure for premiums like these.
Write down which shifts and roles get which adder.
Trade-off: Premiums applied inconsistently breed resentment fast — and shift differentials flow into the overtime math below.
When to use: when coverage — not just certification — is what you are paying for
FLSA: shift differentials are part of the regular rate for overtime, whether paid as a percentage or as a cents-per-hour amount.
Two bands where BLS publishes one
Best for: facilities hiring both entry-level animal care and experienced technician work under similar titles
Because the federal series blends veterinary assistants with laboratory animal caretakers, build two internal bands from the duties you actually need — a caretaker-entry band and a technician band — and post against the one the job really is.
Trade-off: Two bands need a documented duty line between them, or every candidate argues their way into the upper one.
When to use: when your postings range from cage-side husbandry to technician-level work
Questions employers ask
Is the BLS figure for laboratory animal technicians or veterinary assistants?
Both.
SOC 31-9096 is one blended federal series — veterinary assistants and laboratory animal caretakers together — and BLS does not split it.
In the research industries the workers in this SOC are mostly lab animal caretakers, which is why the scientific R&D and university tables are the better signal for this role.
Use the all-industry row as the floor, not the target.
How much more should an LATG make than an ALAT?
There is no verified published figure.
AALAS salary survey results were not accessible for this guide, so no certification-level pay number can be quoted honestly.
Set the step internally: document what a LAT may do that an ALAT may not in your facility, then price each step against a percentile rung in your own band.
Do I have to include a pay range in my job posting?
It depends where the job is.
As of October 6, 2026, 14 states plus DC required a pay range in job postings, with thresholds from all employers (Maryland, Virginia) and one employee (Colorado, Connecticut) up to 50 or more in Hawaii.
New York State requires ranges from businesses with four or more employees.
The state-by-state table is on our pay-transparency laws guide.
What if I can't match research-facility pay?
Be honest about the gap and spend on the parts of the package base pay does not capture: scheduling that protects weekends, funded AALAS certification with paid exam time, cross-training, and a stated raise path tied to your band.
Name them next to the range in the posting.
More hiring resources
More for hiring a laboratory animal technician
Priced the band? Write the pay line.
Post your laboratory animal technician opening with the band, the premiums and the certification steps you just built.