The AVMA just released its 2026 Economic State of the Veterinary Profession report, and if you haven't had a chance to dig into 60+ pages of charts and survey data, we've got you covered.

The headline is reassuring: 93.2% of new graduates secured employment or advanced education before graduation. That's down from the 2022 peak of 97.9%, but historically speaking, it remains excellent. The concern isn't whether new grads can find jobs, it's what those jobs look like financially once they do. Starting salaries for private practice grew to an average of $134,244, which sounds solid until you adjust for inflation. Real income for new graduates actually ticked downward between 2024 and 2025. For established veterinarians, the picture is similar: average compensation hit $154,000, but inflation-adjusted real income has been declining since 2022 and has only recently climbed back to where it was before the 2008 financial crisis. In other words, we're treading water in constant dollars.

Average DVM debt climbed again in 2025 after a brief dip in the early 2020s, reaching $174,484 across all new graduates, and $212,499 for those carrying any debt at all. Nearly 40% of graduating veterinarians now carry more than $200,000 in debt, and almost 6% carry over $400,000. The average debt-to-income ratio held steady at 1.4, meaning the typical new grad owes about a year and a half of gross salary before they've bought a car, paid rent, or considered retirement. That ratio has held stable for a few years, but with federal loan changes coming this July that will cap borrowing well below the cost of attendance at most U.S. schools, the way that debt gets financed is about to change significantly. We covered the loan cap story in detail a few weeks ago, and the AVMA's data makes clear why it matters so much.

There's also a disparity worth noting: average debt varied significantly across racial and ethnic groups, with Hispanic/Latino graduates carrying an average of $223,151 compared to $142,863 for Asian graduates. Access and equity questions in veterinary education aren't abstract — they show up in these numbers.

The ownership picture continues to shift. The share of veterinarians working as practice owners has dropped from 26% in 2023 to 21.3% in 2025, while the proportion working as associates or relief vets has grown. Solo proprietorships now represent fewer than 9% of all practices, down from nearly 19% a decade ago. Practices are getting larger, and corporate structures are consolidating that growth. This is the structural backdrop for all those conversations about minority equity stakes and what ownership actually means in 2026.

On revenue, companion animal exclusive practices reported gross revenue per full-time equivalent (FTE) veterinarian of about $595,000 at the median, but companion animal predominant and mixed practices saw slight revenue declines from 2024. Total expenses consume roughly 70% of gross revenue across all practice types, leaving an average gross margin of around 29.5%. There's room to optimize, but it's not a margin that tolerates much volatility.

Burnout scores improved for the third consecutive year, with the average dropping to 26.2 out of 50. Notably, for the first time since measurement began, the single most common score fell in the "low burnout" range rather than moderate. That's worth acknowledging. Still, more than two-thirds of veterinarians remain in the moderate burnout zone, and 9.3% are actively considering leaving the profession. Associate veterinarians showed the sharpest burnout improvement, while relief veterinarians bucked the trend with scores that have been climbing for five years.

On satisfaction, nearly three-quarters of vets report being satisfied with their job, compensation, and lifestyle. But satisfaction with the profession as a whole is a different story: only 56% feel satisfied there, which is a meaningful gap. You can like your clinic, your team, and your paycheck while still feeling uneasy about the direction of the industry you work in. The data suggests a lot of veterinarians are living in exactly that tension right now.

The technology adoption section is worth a look. AI-assisted medical record keeping is now in use at 17.8% of practices, while AI-assisted radiology sits at 12%. Both rank last among the technologies surveyed. That's not surprising given where adoption tends to start (admin before clinical), but those numbers will look very different in next year's report. Only 40.7% of practice owners describe themselves as enthusiastic about technology adoption, and 15.4% feel they're already falling behind — citing time, cost, and lack of interest as the top reasons. The practices that close that gap in the next two years are going to have a meaningful operational advantage.

The full report is free for AVMA members and covers a lot of ground we haven't touched here — geographic compensation breakdowns, staffing ratios by practice type, and detailed productivity metrics. It’s worth checking out if you're making any major business decisions this year.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has landed its verdict after a lengthy investigation into veterinary pricing, and the remedies are significant. Prescription fees will be capped at £21 for a first medication and £12.50 for any additional ones. Practices will be required to publish price lists for standard services, provide written estimates for treatments expected to exceed £500, and disclose whether they're independently owned or part of a larger corporate group. A price comparison tool is also coming, built off the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' "Find a Vet" service.

The backstory matters here. The CMA investigation found that vet prices had been rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation, and that more than 70% of pet owners were buying long-term medications directly from their practice — even though many could save £200 a year or more by shopping online. A big driver of that behaviour? Most owners didn't know a written prescription was even an option. Meanwhile, consolidation of UK practices under large corporate groups has accelerated rapidly, and the CMA found that ownership was often deliberately unclear to consumers. The reforms are designed to address all three of those issues at once: transparency, choice, and accountability.

For veterinarians, the implications cut both ways. The profession has a genuine opportunity to rebuild public trust at a time when affordability concerns are eroding it — and proactively communicating pricing, ownership, and prescription options is a reasonable ask. At the same time, mandatory price lists and comparison tools will put competitive pressure on practices that have operated with relatively little external scrutiny. The UK is further along this regulatory curve than Canada or the US, but the pressures driving it — corporate consolidation, rising costs, vocal pet owners — are not unique to Britain. It’s a story worth watching.

Here are some of the other stories that caught our eye and we're following this week from around the veterinary world and animal kingdom: