Notes from the verticals we work — behavioral health and veterinary recruiting — written for hiring teams, Talent Partners, and clinicians.
Forty percent of the 2025 graduating class owes $200,000 or more, and the average graduate owes $1.40 for every dollar they earn. The ratio matters more than the balance, and only a few things move it — most of which are decided in the first two years after graduation.
veterinarySeveral states passed limits on non-competes for healthcare practitioners in 2025. Almost none of them name veterinarians. Physicians, dentists, nurses and PAs get the friendlier rules; DVMs mostly fall back to general contract law — and most associates do not know that.
veterinaryEmergency roles pay $150,000 to $220,000 and above because the shifts are genuinely hard to fill. That premium buys you a hire; it does not buy you retention. The rota structure decides whether the person you paid for is still there in eighteen months.
veterinaryAround a third of veterinarians report high burnout, and the honest reasons people leave are structural rather than personal. Leaving clinical practice entirely is one option among several — and most of the others are less drastic than the people considering them assume.
veterinaryGeneral practice relief is quoted at $800 to $1,000 a day, which sounds like a large premium over a salaried job. Run the arithmetic on what a contractor self-funds and most of that premium disappears. Here is the calculation, and the rate where relief actually starts paying.
veterinaryThe USDA designated a record 245 veterinary shortage areas across 47 states for 2026, backed by a record $18 million in loan repayment funding. For a graduate carrying $212,000 in debt and open to food-animal work, this is the largest structural lever in the profession.
veterinarySerious psychological distress among veterinarians rose from 6.4% to 9.7% between the two most recent Merck studies, and among support staff it runs at 18.1% — nearly double. The named driver is not resilience. It is staffing.
veterinaryAssociate vacancies average over fifteen months and 58% of practices report difficulty hiring. The scarce thing is not recruiters — it is people who can tell a DACVIM candidate from a general practitioner with an interest. If you have worked in practice, you already can.
veterinaryMore than half of credentialed veterinary technicians say they are not used to their full potential, and 48% see little difference between what they are asked to do and what an uncredentialed colleague does. Turnover in the role runs at 35% a year. Those facts are the same fact.
veterinaryThe official median is $125,510. The range around it is enormous — the bottom tenth earn under $70,350 and the top tenth over $212,890. Which end you sit on has less to do with experience than with setting, and most associates have never checked their number against a source.
veterinaryAAHA's own survey data puts the average time to fill an associate DVM role at over fifteen months, and a credentialed technician role at almost thirteen. That is not a recruiting problem. It is a maths problem, and most practices are solving the wrong half of it.
veterinaryFifty-eight percent of practices report difficulty hiring, and the average associate vacancy runs over fifteen months. In that market a practice that still won't state the salary, the caseload or the rota is telling you something specific. Here is how to read it.