The groomer shortage: why salons cannot hire and what owners are doing about it

Start with what the sourced data can and cannot say.

Our research found no federal statistic that counts unfilled groomer positions, and no verified count of short-staffed salons.

What exists is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' outlook for the occupation group groomers work in.

BLS projects employment of animal care and service workers to grow 11% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the 3% average for all occupations, with about 69,400 openings a year.

The group is animal caretakers plus animal trainers, and animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021) is the category that includes groomers, bathers, kennel and daycare attendants, pet sitters and dog walkers.

Most of those openings are not new jobs.

BLS expects many to come from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

For a salon, that churn is the shortage in miniature: most of the hiring market is replacing people, not adding chairs.

The work itself comes with demands BLS names.

The agency notes that animal care work can be physically or emotionally demanding, and that workers risk injury when caring for animals.

It also describes part-time work as common for animal caretakers, with schedules that may include evenings, weekends and holidays — and care around the clock in 24-hour facilities like kennels.

None of that reverses with a single job ad: demand grows faster than average, most openings are replacements, the job BLS describes is a demanding one with injury risk, and the on-the-job training route runs under an experienced groomer.

The levers that respond are structural: where your next groomer comes from, and what you can offer the one you have.

BLS's own numbers show self-employment built into this workforce.

Its Employment Projections put animal caretakers at 365,300 jobs in 2025, growing to 409,400 by 2035 — a series that includes the self-employed.

BLS puts self-employed workers at 25% of animal caretakers in 2025.

That is all animal caretakers, not groomers alone — BLS publishes no groomer-only self-employment share.

But the settings split shows where the occupation lives: 40% in other personal services, the industry grouping that includes pet care; 10% in professional, scientific and technical services, which includes veterinary services; and 9% in retail trade.

For a salon owner, the translation is that a quarter of this workforce already works without an employer.

Self-employment in this trade can mean a mobile van of one's own, a rented chair inside someone else's salon, or house-call work — and a move into a different occupation entirely is the churn BLS describes.

Our research has no verified figure for how many groomers take any one of those paths, so treat any claim about "most groomers going mobile" as marketing until you see a source.

Pay shapes the comparison, and the government series show its shape.

In the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists (SOC 39-5012) had a national median of $17.21 an hour.

That is almost identical to the $17.00 median for animal caretakers (includes groomers, SOC 39-2021) — but hairdressers' 90th percentile was much higher, $34.23 against $24.07.

Both figures are payroll wages across all industries, and the comparison is one groomers themselves often draw: roughly the same median, a higher ceiling somewhere else.

What that means for your offer is structural, not a number to beat.

Your offer competes with whatever a groomer believes self-employment would pay them — and our research has no verified figure for what an independent or mobile groomer earns.

The honest counter is a pay plan and a book of clients that make staying better than leaving, which is retention work, not a hiring ad.

The trade trains its own.

BLS says pet groomers typically learn by working under an experienced groomer, though they can also attend grooming schools.

The route the agency describes runs through a working salon — learning happens at the table, under someone whose day is already booked.

That on-the-job model can cap how fast any one salon adds capacity: supervision time comes out of the experienced groomer's own day, so your training output depends on the hours your experienced groomers can give.

A salon with no experienced groomer has no on-the-job training route to run — one reason the first experienced hire matters so much.

There is no verified, primary-source figure for how long it takes to train a bather into a full groomer, and no industry-standard timeline exists in our research.

Read a quoted timeline as that program's own figure unless it names an independent source.

Your own timeline depends on your volume, the services you sell, and the supervision time your experienced groomers can give.

Whether to hire an experienced groomer or train one from a bather is a decision with its own trade-offs — speed against loyalty, payroll against pipeline.

The recruiting mechanics for the role, from where to post to how to run a trial groom, are on the how to hire a dog groomer page.

The owners who stop churning work three levers at once: they grow their own groomers, they formalize the training, and they build pay and conditions that hold up against the alternatives.

None of it needs an industry benchmark — each lever is a decision about your own salon.

Train bathers.

The big-box employers built their pipelines this way, and they describe them on their own careers pages.

PetSmart's careers site says new salon hires start as bathers, bathe over 125 dogs, then attend its paid Grooming Academy — a 4-week, 160-hour classroom program led by District Academy Trainers.

PetSmart says trainees then groom 200 dogs and pass a technical assessment by a District Academy Trainer to earn its Pet Stylist title, and puts the overall academy at over 800 hours with more than 200 dogs.

Petco's grooming careers page shows the same structure as a ladder — bather, Petco Pet Stylist, Pet Stylist Pro, Grooming Salon Manager, Grooming Mentor — in an employee testimonial on its own site.

These are each employer's descriptions of its own programs and titles, not an industry template.

The transferable part is the shape: a bather job that feeds a training track, with defined milestones and someone accountable for them.

An independent salon runs a smaller version of the same machine: hire a bather, define what mastery looks like at your tables, and let the services you actually sell write the curriculum.

The pipeline is slower than a hired hand — but a groomer you trained is also a groomer who knows your tables, your clients and your standards.

Register an apprenticeship.

Formal training gained a federal on-ramp in 2026: the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Apprenticeship recognized Pet Groomer as an apprenticeable occupation, approved January 16, 2026 and announced in OA Bulletin 2026-22.

A registered program can be time-based — at least 2,000 hours of on-the-job learning — competency-based, or a hybrid of the two.

The wage rule matters as much as the training rule.

Registered apprenticeship standards must include a progressively increasing wage schedule, and an apprentice's entry wage may not fall below the federal minimum wage where it applies — a registered grooming apprentice cannot be unpaid.

Employers do not have to write standards from scratch, either: DOL approved National Guidelines for Apprenticeship Standards for an Animal Groomer occupation, submitted by Groom Curriculum, on August 12, 2025, as a model employers can adopt.

Confirm the current details with the Office of Apprenticeship or your state apprenticeship agency before you commit to a program.

Pay and conditions that compete.

Start with labels.

PetSmart's own careers page advertises a guaranteed hourly wage and up to 55% commission for its pet stylists, plus paid time off, health benefits and merchandise discounts.

That is one employer's posted package — "up to" is a ceiling, not a typical rate — and it is not a market benchmark for your salon.

For a government anchor, BLS publishes no groomer-only wage.

Its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics put animal caretakers — the category that includes groomers, counting payroll workers only — at a national median of $17.00 an hour, with a 90th percentile of $24.07.

Your own market position, client prices and cost structure decide what you can offer; another employer's posted ceiling does not.

However you structure pay, commission does not settle overtime by itself.

The FLSA's retail-commission overtime exemption applies only when all three of the conditions below hold.

• Employment by a retail or service establishment;
• A regular rate above 1.5 times the applicable minimum wage for every hour worked in a week with overtime;
• More than half of earnings over a representative period paid as commissions.

If any one of the three fails in a week, time-and-a-half is owed for the hours over 40 that week.

Customer tips never count as commissions for this exemption, so they do not help meet the more-than-half test.

If you are weighing a commission plan, confirm the setup with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel first — the exemption turns on facts that change week by week.

Pay is not only the rate.

BLS describes part-time work as common among animal caretakers, with schedules that may include evenings, weekends and holidays.

Posting the real schedule in the ad, and protecting days off once someone is hired, are part of a competitive offer — not perks.

When the pipeline and the offer are set, the hiring hub collects the employer guides that sit around this one.

A waitlist is demand you have already won.

The job now is to protect it without breaking your team or the wage-and-hour rules — and without booking appointments you cannot staff.

Book by the work, not by the clock.

Group the day's dogs so bathing and drying feed the groom tables steadily, and stop adding appointments when a groomer's day is full rather than squeezing in one more chair.

Set the next appointment at checkout, while the client is happiest — our research found no industry-standard rebooking interval, so the interval is yours to set from your own clients and services.

Use the whole team before you promise what you cannot staff.

Bathers and grooming assistants can absorb bathing, drying and brush-out work — which is also the first rung of the training ladder from the last section.

What you should not do is fill the gap with unpaid hours.

Under the Department of Labor's hours-worked rule, work the employer knows or has reason to believe is happening counts as work time, even if it was never requested — and a groomer finishing a dog after clock-out must be paid for that time.

Deposits and cancellation fees can protect booked slots.

No federal rule in our research sets them for grooming salons.

The FTC's rule on unfair or deceptive fees covers live-event tickets and short-term lodging — grooming is not on its list — so your policy is a business decision, and how your state treats fee policies was outside our research.

Have counsel review whatever you adopt before you enforce it.

Finally, the cheapest vacancy is the one you never create.

Pay reviews, schedule fairness and a training path with visible milestones are retention work, and retention is the response that shrinks your own shortage instead of managing it.

When you are ready to post, see what candidates see: the live dog groomer job listings on the board.

Employer information, not legal, tax, insurance or veterinary advice. Pay plans, apprentice wages and scheduling policies have enforcement consequences — confirm the details with the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, your state apprenticeship agency or employment counsel before you act.