Veterinarian shortage statistics: how many vets the U.S. trains, needs and forecasts

Vet school seats and applicants

U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine enrolled 4,278 first-year students in 2025, against 4,214 in 2015. Demand for those seats grew faster: there were 2.4 applicants per seat in 2025, against 1.6 in 2015. (AAVMC 2025 annual report)

Total enrollment reached a record 16,143 veterinary students in 2025, and the application service received 13,174 applicants for its 2026 cycle, up 7% on the year before. (AAVMC 2025 annual report)

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<a href="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/"><img src="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/applicants-per-seat-chart.svg" alt="Applicants per first-year seat at U.S. veterinary colleges. Applicants per first-year seat, 2015 to 2025, as published by AAVMC." width="800" height="440"></a>
<p>Chart: <a href="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/">vetclinic.info</a>. Data: Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges.</p>

Download the data (CSV) (AAVMC 2025 annual report)

How many veterinarians the U.S. is projected to need

BLS projects employment of veterinarians to grow 9% from 2025 to 2035, from 91,100 jobs, and expects about 3,100 openings a year. Many of those openings replace veterinarians who retire or move to other occupations; they are not all new jobs. (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook)

Set side by side, U.S. colleges seat about 1.4 first-year students for every projected opening. This is our comparison of two published figures, not a forecast: not every student graduates, the class that started in 2025 graduates about four years later, and graduates of accredited schools abroad, including in the Caribbean, also fill U.S. openings. (AAVMC 2025 annual report; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook)

For veterinary technologists and technicians, BLS projects 9% growth and about 13,400 openings a year, about 4.3 for every veterinarian opening. (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, vet techs; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook)

Download the data (CSV) (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, vet techs)

Two forecasts, two answers

Mars Veterinary Health, which runs a network of veterinary hospitals, published a workforce study in August 2023 that said as many as 55,000 more companion-animal veterinarians would be needed by 2030, and that a shortfall of up to 24,000 would remain even after new graduates. (Mars Veterinary Health, 2023)

An analysis by Brakke Consulting, commissioned by the AVMA and presented in October 2024, reached the opposite conclusion: graduates of existing U.S. colleges are likely enough to meet demand through 2035, and the projections support neither an overall shortage nor excess capacity. Its peer-reviewed version, published in JAVMA in February 2025, found that the data do not support an expectation of a continued shortage. (AVMA News, October 2024; JAVMA, 2025)

The two use different methods, and each side has questioned the other: the Mars study's author argues that labor shortages are almost never calculated with supply-and-demand curves because the data are not sufficient, while the AVMA analysis's lead author argues that supply and demand cannot be set aside. We publish both and do not choose between them. (AVMA News, October 2024)

Download the data (CSV) (Mars Veterinary Health, 2023; JAVMA, 2025)

Vet techs per veterinarian, by state

Nationally there are 1.5 veterinary technologists and technicians for every veterinarian: 129,140 and 83,900 in wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025. The most per veterinarian are in Texas, Utah and Alaska; the fewest are in Arkansas and the District of Columbia. (BLS OEWS, vet techs; BLS OEWS, veterinarians)

In 10 states, employed veterinarians outnumber employed vet techs. (BLS OEWS, vet techs; BLS OEWS, veterinarians)

This ratio is our calculation; BLS publishes the two counts separately. Veterinarians per resident, state by state, are on our veterinarian statistics page, linked below.

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<a href="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/"><img src="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/techs-per-vet-chart.svg" alt="Vet techs per veterinarian, by state. Employed veterinary technologists and technicians per employed veterinarian (May 2025), every state with both estimates published, highest first." width="800" height="1234"></a>
<p>Chart: <a href="https://vetclinic.info/statistics/veterinary-shortage/">vetclinic.info</a>. Data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>

Download the data (CSV) (BLS OEWS, vet techs; BLS OEWS, veterinarians)

USDA veterinary shortage areas, by state

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture lists 255 designated veterinary shortage situations for fiscal year 2026, in 47 states. State animal health officials and federal veterinary officers nominate them, and a veterinarian who commits to serve in one can apply to have part of their student loans repaid. (USDA NIFA shortage map; AVMA News, January 2026)

These are not shortages of care for pets: 227 are in private food-animal practice, mostly in rural areas, and 28 are in public practice. The most are in Colorado (9); Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have none. (USDA NIFA shortage map)

NIFA's map shows 106 of the 255 with a loan-repayment award for the 2026 cycle and 149 (58%) without one. (USDA NIFA shortage map)

Download the data (CSV) (USDA NIFA shortage map)

What new veterinarians owe

The class of 2026 graduated owing an average of $227,588 among those with veterinary school debt, or $185,424 across all graduates, including the 18.5% who owed nothing. For the class of 2025, the average among those with debt was $212,499. (AVMA News, October 2026; AVMA News, October 2025)

For graduates entering full-time work, average debt was 1.5 times expected starting income, and 43.3% of the class owed $200,000 or more. (AVMA News, October 2026)

Methodology

Job counts, projections, openings and median pay come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, projections for 2025 to 2035. Its job counts include the self-employed, so they are higher than the wage-and-salary counts in BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey.

Vet techs per veterinarian divides each state's OEWS employment estimate for veterinary technologists and technicians (occupation code 29-2056) by its estimate for veterinarians (29-1131), for May 2025. Both are wage-and-salary counts from the same survey, so self-employed practice owners are left out of both. A state where BLS suppressed either estimate is shown as n/a and not ranked. The national ratio uses the national estimates. Veterinary assistants are a separate BLS occupation and are not counted, and the estimates come from a survey, so small differences between states are not meaningful.

Vet school figures are from the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges' annual report for 2025, read from the data labels of its chart of first-year enrollment and applicants per seat at U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine. AAVMC's application service also serves programs outside the United States.

Students per opening divides the latest first-year class by the BLS yearly average of projected openings. It compares two published figures at one moment. It does not account for students who do not graduate, the time to graduation, U.S. openings filled by graduates of schools abroad, or veterinarians who leave clinical work, and it is not a forecast.

USDA counts are our tally of NIFA's Veterinary Services Shortage Situations Map, read in November 2026 one state at a time. A shortage that covers counties in more than one state is counted once, under the state NIFA lists it in. Press reports from January, when the 2026 cycle opened, gave a lower total for the same cycle; NIFA's map is the primary list, and the list we counted is kept with this page's data.

The two forecasts are summarized in their publishers' own terms, with each study's date and sponsor. We do not rate them. Debt figures are from AVMA's survey of graduating seniors at U.S. colleges and two Caribbean colleges, as reported by AVMA News.

Nothing on this page comes from the vetclinic.info directory of practices, which does not cover every state evenly.