Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Veterinary Practice Revenue Benchmark

Veterinary services for companion animals and livestock.

NAICS 541940, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Veterinary Practice Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Every veterinary practice with paid employees appears in the 2022 Economic Census. The average below divides their combined receipts by the number of practices counted.

≈$1,840,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

34,126

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $62.8 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $62.8 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 34,126 employer establishments works out to $1,840,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Veterinary Services (NAICS 541940). Covers veterinary services for both companion animals and livestock, which are different businesses inside one code. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

A practice sells three things at once: consultation time, diagnostics on its own equipment, and medication dispensed on site. That mix is unusual among professional practices, and it means revenue per employer establishment depends on how much of the diagnostic and pharmacy work stays in-house rather than going to a referral hospital.

Companion animal clinics and large-animal practices are counted together, although their equipment, premises and travel costs have almost nothing in common. Emergency and specialty referral hospitals operate around the clock at a cost structure a daytime clinic never carries, and both are counted here.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

51.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 75.7 percent at 1 year, 66.6 percent at 2 years, 58.8 percent at 3 years, 55.1 percent at 4 years, 51.4 percent at 5 years. 5,799 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 51.4 to 54.8 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 75.7 percent of the starting count2 years: 66.6 percent of the starting count3 years: 58.8 percent of the starting count4 years: 55.1 percent of the starting count5 years: 51.4 percent of the starting count75.766.658.855.151.4Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years5,799 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 51 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 51.4 to 54.8 percent. This benchmark covers Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for veterinary practices on their own: they are 34,126 of the 76,067 employer establishments in that group, about 45 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers clinical and support staff, not the medication and materials dispensed to clients.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈37%

Payroll share of receipts, Veterinary Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 37.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Payroll covers veterinarians, technicians and front of house staff, and takes a large share of receipts.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about veterinary practices, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

A practice earns from consultation, from diagnostics performed on its own equipment and from medication dispensed on site, and the census reports the total. How that splits determines both the capital in the building and the resilience of the business.

Referral flows between general practices and specialty hospitals leave no trace in this figure. Work sent to a specialist hospital leaves the practice, while a practice that can hold more complex cases keeps the fee and the relationship.

Operator lens

  • Appointment capacity is set by clinicians, not by demand. A practice can be fully booked for weeks and still not grow until it adds another licensed pair of hands.
  • Preventive care arrives on a schedule. Vaccination, dental and wellness plans arrive on a schedule and cushion a practice against a quiet month of emergencies.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • How many veterinarians are there and are they staying? Clinical capacity sets the revenue ceiling, and recruitment in this field is slow.
  • What diagnostics are done in-house? Imaging and laboratory work change both the capital base and the revenue per visit.
  • What share of clients is on a wellness plan? Recurring preventive care is among the steadier revenue a practice carries.
  • How is after-hours emergency covered? Arrangements with an emergency hospital or a rota affect both staffing and client retention.
  • What is the age profile of the client base? A practice whose clients aged in together can see visits taper unless new households keep arriving.

Models worth considering

  • Make prevention a subscription Wellness plans convert irregular visits into monthly payments and bring animals in before problems become emergencies.
  • Bring back the work that leaves Dentistry, ultrasound and minor surgery are commonly referred out and can be retained with equipment and training.
  • Species other practices decline can anchor a niche Exotics, large animals and behavioral work are underserved in many areas and command their own pricing.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Veterinary Services (NAICS 541940), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Pet grooming and boarding without veterinary care are a separate Census category.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.