The Economics of American Pet Care

Americans have never spent more on their pets, and an entire service economy has grown up around them — the people who groom, board, walk, sit for and run daycare for the country's dogs and cats. Yet next to the retail side of pet care, the services side is rarely measured. This report measures it, state by state, using the most recent federal data available.

Two datasets do the work. The U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counts every employer business, its staff and its payroll down to the state level — the 2023 release is the latest. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics attaches a wage to the work — the May 2025 release is the latest. Together they answer four practical questions: how big is the industry, where is it, what does it pay, and how fast is it changing?

The short version: it's a $4.9 billion payroll across 25,551 businesses and 175,116 workers; it grew faster over the last five years than almost any comparable service sector; and it looks strikingly different depending on which state you're standing in. The map below is interactive — the sections beneath it explain what it shows.

The industry clusters where the people are — but not only there

In 2023 the U.S. counted 25,551 employer pet-care businesses across grooming, boarding, daycare, dog-walking and pet-sitting (Census CBP, NAICS 812910). The five most populous states — California (2,591), Texas (2,001), Florida (1,923), New York (1,308) and Illinois (1,021) — hold 34.6% of them, closely tracking where Americans and their pets live. Payroll follows suit: California alone pays out $620 million a year — 12.6% of the national wage bill — ahead of Texas ($418M) and Florida ($300M).

Density tells a different, more useful story

Raw counts favor big states; businesses per 100,000 residents reveals where pet care is most established relative to the population that supports it. Here the leaders flip: New Hampshire (14.9), Maine (12.8), Colorado (11.9), Rhode Island (11.7) and Wyoming (11.0) top the nation, well above the 7.6 national average. At the other end sit Hawaii (3.6), Mississippi (3.9) and Louisiana (4.4). For an operator, low density can signal an underserved market rather than a weak one.

What the work pays, and why two numbers appear

The BLS median wage for animal caretakers is $35,360 nationally (May 2025 — the most recent release, up from $33,470 a year earlier), ranging from about $27,250 to $50,060. By state, the occupational median runs highest in Washington, D.C. ($44,210), Washington ($40,570) and Hawaii ($40,130) and lowest in Mississippi ($26,970), Louisiana ($27,910) and Alabama ($28,330) — a $17,240 spread for the same work. (A separate Census measure — payroll ÷ employment — gives a lower $28,047 average because it counts part-time and seasonal staff.)

High pay doesn't imply a crowded market: Hawaii pays among the most yet has the fewest pet-care businesses per capita in the country — thin supply, not thin demand.

Four regions, four different industries

Grouped by Census region, the contrasts sharpen. The South has more pet-care businesses than any region (9,291 — 36% of the U.S. total) and is growing fastest (+39.5% since 2018), yet it has the lowest density (7.1 per 100k) and among the lowest pay ($32,212 median) — a region still catching up to its own demand. The West pays the most (a $37,615 employment-weighted median) and is comparatively dense. The Northeast pairs high density (8.3) with high pay ($36,202) — a mature market. The Midwest sits near the middle on every measure. Same industry, four different shapes.

A five-year boom, with more forecast

This is a fast-growing sector, not a mature one. Between 2018 and 2023, pet-care businesses grew 31.5% and jobs grew 50.6% (Census CBP). Remarkably, every state had more pet-care businesses in 2023 than in 2018 — the expansion was nationwide, not concentrated in a few boom markets. Looking forward, BLS projects animal-care employment will rise a further 11% from 2024 to 2034 — "much faster than the average for all occupations" — with about 81,700 openings a year. The steepest five-year gains came in smaller-base states such as Alabama, Utah and Kansas, where a modest number of new openings moves the percentage sharply.

A fragmented industry of small operators

The average pet-care business employs just 6.9 people, and these figures count only employer firms — the large population of solo groomers, walkers and sitters who file as non-employers sits on top of this. Size varies by state, from facility-heavy D.C. (9.5 employees per business), Minnesota (8.9) and Maryland (8.5) — where boarding and daycare operations dominate — down to Wyoming (3.5), Alaska (4.6) and West Virginia (4.8), where the typical business is a one- or two-person shop. That fragmentation — many small, independent operators — is the defining shape of the market, and the reason lightweight software tends to fit it better than enterprise systems.