The highest-paying pet care jobs sit at the top of the trade's ladder: management, instruction and training lines post the highest measured medians, while bathing, kennel and daycare work anchor the entry level.
BLS prices occupations, not job titles, so every figure here is labeled with the occupation behind it.
Below is the ranking, what ownership changes, and how to move up.
The ranking: highest-paying grooming and pet care roles
One caveat comes before the numbers: BLS prices occupations, not job titles.
BLS publishes no groomer-only occupation — groomers are described inside the Animal Care and Service Workers profile, and pay data are reported for SOC 39-2021, Animal Caretakers.
Sitting in that same occupation are dog bathers, kennel and daycare attendants, pet sitters and dog walkers, and BLS publishes no groomer-only wage for any of them.
Every figure in the ranking comes from the same federal release: the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program's May 2025 estimates, published May 15, 2026 — national medians across all industries, counting wage-and-salary jobs only.
Ranked by each role's closest measured line, the trade looks like this.
| Role | Closest BLS line | Median, May 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Grooming instructor | Postsecondary career/technical education teachers (25-1194) — loose stand-in | $30.68/hr ($63,820) |
| Grooming salon manager | First-line supervisors of personal service workers (39-1022) — stand-in | $23.36/hr ($48,590) |
| Pet resort manager | Same 39-1022 stand-in line | $23.36/hr ($48,590) |
| Dog trainer | Animal trainers (39-2011) — the occupation that includes dog trainers | $19.22/hr ($39,990) |
| Pet salon receptionist | Receptionists and information clerks (43-4171) — stand-in | $18.27/hr ($38,010) |
| Dog groomer — together with bather, kennel attendant, daycare attendant, pet sitter, dog walker and shelter attendant | Animal caretakers (39-2021) — one shared occupation that includes groomers | $17.00/hr ($35,360) |
| Grooming salon owner | None — the payroll survey counts wage-and-salary jobs only | Not measured in this release |
Mobile, cat and show groomers are groomers in BLS's occupation system, so this same caretaker line is their closest measured figure too.
Grooming apprentices map to the occupation as well: O*NET lists Pet Groomer as a DOL-approved registered apprenticeship title for SOC 39-2021.
For the caretaker line, BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook gives the same May 2025 median: $35,360 a year.
Three of those lines are stand-ins, and the labels matter.
The instructor line covers postsecondary teachers of every trade, and many grooming instructors teach at private schools or big-box academies, outside that line.
The manager line counts supervisors across personal service businesses of every kind, not grooming or resort managers alone.
The receptionist line covers receptionists across the economy.
Read the ranking as where each role's closest measured line sits — not as exact pay for the job title.
Two bridge occupations post measured pay of their own: veterinary assistants at a median of $18.34 an hour ($38,150), and veterinary technologists and technicians at $22.78 ($47,380).
Those are separate career paths with their own training routes, not rungs on the grooming ladder.
Geography moves the shared entry line.
The District of Columbia posted the highest state median for animal caretakers in May 2025 at $21.25 an hour ($44,210), followed by Washington ($19.51; $40,570), Hawaii ($19.29) and Massachusetts ($19.06); Mississippi was lowest at $12.97 ($26,970).
The dog groomer salary page holds the full state tables.
Industry moves the same line.
Of the 266,910 wage-and-salary animal caretaker jobs counted in May 2025, 146,190 sat in NAICS 812900, Other Personal Services — the group containing grooming salons, boarding and daycare alongside unrelated services — at a median of $16.92 ($35,190).
Caretakers in Other Miscellaneous Retailers, the group that includes pet stores, earned a median of $16.96 ($35,280), and their top-10 percent threshold of $58,550 was the highest of the three pet-related industries.
Caretakers in veterinary services earned $15.46 ($32,150), below the all-industry caretaker median.
Read the labels before you compare
Owner and mobile paths: pay outside the wage tables
The ranking above is a payroll ranking, and it stops at the salon door.
The OEWS survey counts wage-and-salary jobs, so self-employed groomers, booth renters, mobile owner-operators and platform contractors do not appear in any figure on it.
The projections program shows how much of the trade that leaves out.
BLS's Employment Projections, which do include the self-employed, counted 365,300 animal caretaker jobs in 2025, with 24.8 percent of them self-employed — a share for all animal caretakers, not a groomer split.
Among animal trainers, the self-employed share was 38.7 percent in 2025.
That absence cuts both ways.
The $50,060 top-decile figure describes employees, and the survey did not measure self-employed income at all, so it is not a ceiling for an owner-operator.
What the owner and mobile paths earn runs through a business — prices, volume and costs — and this page publishes no owner-income, commission or booth-rent figure, because our research found no industry-wide benchmark for any of them.
BLS notes that many states require self-employed animal care workers to have a business license.
Which license applies, and what it costs, is set by each state and city, so confirm with your state agriculture department and local government before you set up.
For the groomer-only version of this question — the employed, mobile, self-employed and owner ceilings — see how much a dog groomer can make, and for the van question the mobile groomer salary guide.
Management roles: salon manager and pet resort manager pay
Two roles on this list share one measured line: grooming salon managers and pet resort managers both map closest to first-line supervisors of personal service workers, SOC 39-1022.
That line posted a national median of $23.36 an hour, or $48,590 a year, in May 2025.
Two narrower cuts sit inside the same line.
Within NAICS 812900, Other Personal Services, the supervisor median was $21.98 ($45,720) — closer to the industries grooming and resort managers actually work in.
Across all industries, the supervisor line ran from $16.35 at the 10th percentile to $36.22 at the 90th.
The stand-in is broad, so treat $48,590 as the neighborhood, not the wage: it counts supervisors across personal service businesses of every kind, and BLS publishes no grooming-manager or resort-manager line of its own.
What moves an individual manager past the median is not measured anywhere in this data.
The two jobs differ in setting, not in measured pay.
A grooming salon manager runs a grooming floor — groomers, bathers, bookings and retail.
A pet resort manager runs daycare, boarding or resort operations, where the supervised floor is kennel and playgroup staff.
In the wage data, both sit on the same supervisor line.
Dog trainer pay
Dog training is the one role on this list whose pay has a dedicated BLS occupation rather than a stand-in: animal trainers, SOC 39-2011 — the occupation that includes dog trainers.
That line posted a median of $19.22 an hour ($39,990 a year) across 18,770 wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025.
Its top decile is the strongest top-10 threshold stated in this ranking: the highest-paid 10 percent of animal trainers earned over $75,490 a year.
The line is not dog-only — it covers trainers of riding, harness, security, performance and service animals, horses included — so read it as the occupation's spread, not a dog-training wage.
The outlook is flatter than the caretaker line's.
BLS's Employment Projections expect animal trainers to grow from 47,800 to 49,700 jobs between 2025 and 2035, a 4.2 percent gain, with about 6,500 openings a year.
Self-employment is common in the occupation, at 38.7 percent in 2025 — which is another reason the payroll median does not answer the question for the whole occupation.
For the state tables behind this line, see the dog trainer salary page; the dog trainer career guide covers the work itself.
Entry roles: bathers, kennel and daycare attendants, receptionists
Most of the entry roles in this ranking sit on one measured line.
Dog bathers, kennel attendants, dog daycare attendants, pet sitters, dog walkers and shelter animal care attendants all fall inside animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021), the same occupation as groomers.
That line posted a median of $17.00 an hour ($35,360 a year) across 266,910 wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025.
The spread around that median is wide.
The middle half of the occupation earned $29,820 to $40,050 a year; the lowest-paid 10 percent earned under $27,250, and the highest-paid 10 percent earned over $50,060.
Two entry roles sit on their own stand-in lines.
Pet salon receptionists map to receptionists and information clerks (43-4171): $18.27 an hour ($38,010) nationally, and $16.64 ($34,620) inside the Other Personal Services group.
Big-box pet care associates map closest to retail salespersons in the retailers group that includes pet stores, at a median of $17.17 ($35,720).
Vet-clinic entry jobs — kennel help and bathing at a clinic — sit in the softest industry row: animal caretakers in veterinary services earned a median of $15.46 ($32,150) in May 2025.
Getting in is the easy part to price.
BLS describes animal care and service work as typically requiring a high school diploma or equivalent, with no prior work experience in a related occupation, learned on the job.
To see how current postings phrase it, browse open dog bather jobs.
How to move up the pay list
Read as a career, the ranking is a ladder.
Bathing, kennel and daycare work start the list on the caretaker line.
Full-charge grooming sits on that same line, management moves you to the supervisor line, training moves you to the trainer line, and instruction maps to the highest stand-in of the set.
Ownership leaves the wage tables altogether.
The measured jumps are the moves into management, training or instruction, because each one moves your pay onto a different BLS line.
Moving from bather to groomer — the bather-to-groomer path covers how salons train for it — stays on the caretaker line, so this data does not measure what that step pays.
Setting moves the same caretaker line in smaller steps.
The retail group that includes pet stores posted the highest top-10 percent threshold of the three pet-related industries, over $58,550, while veterinary services fell below the all-industry caretaker median.
Geography moves it further, from a $26,970 median in Mississippi to $44,210 in the District of Columbia.
The demand backdrop favors the climb.
BLS's Employment Projections expect animal caretaker employment to grow 12.1 percent from 2025 to 2035, from 365,300 to 409,400 jobs, with about 62,800 openings a year.
The Occupational Outlook Handbook's combined figure for caretakers and trainers is 11 percent growth, much faster than the 3 percent average across all occupations, with about 69,400 openings a year.
BLS says many of those openings come from replacing workers who move to other occupations or leave the labor force.
One honest note: our research found no federal data that splits caretaker pay by certification, so this ranking makes no claim about what a credential adds to a paycheck.
The training routes into the trade — school, apprenticeship or big-box academy — are covered step by step in how to become a dog groomer.
Career information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 and Employment Projections 2025-35; check bls.gov for the current release, and confirm licensing questions with your state agriculture department or local government.