Veterinary Salary Estimator for Early Career Veterinarians FAQ
Q: What is the AVMA Veterinary Salary Estimator for Early Career Veterinarians?
A: The estimator is a predictive tool that can be used to help you address a wide range of decisions regarding your career path. It provides percentiles of salaries for specific employment scenarios for veterinarians, based on historical data. Because it is based on historical data, it is not a tool indicating "what should be" but, rather, "what has been."
Q: Who should use the AVMA Veterinary Salary Estimator for Early Career Veterinarians?
A: This estimator is specifically designed for veterinarians who have one to six years of workforce experience. If you are a veterinary student gathering information for your first job, you must use the AVMA Veterinary Salary Estimator for Veterinary Students.
Q: How should the AVMA Veterinary Salary Estimator be used?
A: You should use this estimator as one piece of information in your overall strategy for career management and negotiating salaries. The estimator is designed to encourage you to think about the choices and factors that impact your potential salaries, based on data collected from practicing veterinarians. We encourage you to run multiple scenarios to see how various factors have historically influenced salary. Rather than accepting the results of any scenario at face value, use the estimator as part of your individual strategy to advocate for yourself during the salary negotiation process or to help guide your career decisions.
Q Am I guaranteed to get a salary that is within the percentile?
A: No. This estimator is a predictive tool that provides percentiles based on historic trends. The results of this estimator are a reference based on trends and are not intended to be used as recommendations or suggestions for a specific individual’s salary.
Q: What’s the source of the data used to develop the AVMA Veterinary Salary Estimator for Early Career Veterinarians?
A: The estimator is based on data collected from the AVMA Compensation Survey. This comprises responses from over 4,000 survey participants whose graduation dates range from 2012 through 2017. The statistically significant factors in the estimator from the AVMA Compensation Survey are years of experience (up to six years), geographic location of the practice, practice type, additional qualifications (i.e. board-certified or practice owner) and number of hours worked per week.
Q: Why is veterinary school attended not included as a factor?
A: Your veterinary school attended is not a significant factor in predicting salaries. There is no evidence in our data that school of graduation is correlated to statistically significant differences in salary.
Q: Why do you ask about additional post-DVM/VMD education?
A: The question is asked because completion of additional educational qualifications is a statistically significant variable in providing predictive salary ranges for veterinarians with up to six years of post-graduate work experience.
Q: Why do you ask about geographic location (ZIP code)?
A: Regardless of your profession, the area of the country in which you work has an effect on your salary. A primary factor influencing this variable is the cost of living in that geographical area.
Q: Why does species focus affect salary results?
A: Data from the AVMA Compensation Survey does indicate that salaries are significantly impacted by the species focus of the clinical practice and it has therefore been included in the estimator. The AVMA is not passing judgment on the suitability, future career opportunities or earning potential for any given species focus.
Q: How does the number of hours worked in week influence salary results?
A: For veterinarians with up to six years of work experience, more hours worked is correlated with higher salary outputs.