Every live veterinarian opening on the PayRecruiter platform, and how long it has been open, by state and metro. Published monthly. Free to reprint with attribution.
Data as of 5 Oct 2026 · next edition second Thursday of NovemberEveryone in veterinary medicine knows hiring is hard. Nobody publishes how hard. Job boards show you what is open today; they never tell you how long it has been open, which is the number that actually describes the market.
PayRecruiter sees every opening that the corporate groups bring to the platform, with its posting date. That lets us count the one thing a job board can’t: age. An opening that has sat for four months is not the same as one posted last week, and a state where half the roles are aged is not the same market as one where a quarter are.
So each month we take one snapshot and publish it: how many veterinarian openings are live, how many were posted more than 120 days ago, how many are new, and where. State and metro cuts are free to hospitals and veterinary associations.
This is platform data, not a census. It covers the 47 corporate groups whose openings are on PayRecruiter, which is most of the national volume and almost none of the independent single-site practices. The method is at the bottom of the page, and we don’t restate past months.
The October 2026 headline: half of all live veterinarian openings have been open for more than four months, and only 1,005 were posted in the last 30 days. The old ones aren’t closing.
States with at least 100 live openings, ranked by the share that have been open for more than 120 days.
Maryland is small but the stalest market in the country: 77 of 113 live openings are more than four months old and only 11 were posted in the last 30 days, the lowest posting rate among states with 100 or more roles. 19 groups are hiring, concentrated around Baltimore and the Washington suburbs.
Pennsylvania is the oldest large market in the country: three in five live openings were posted more than four months ago, and only 40 new ones appeared in the last 30 days. 27 corporate groups are hiring here, and most of the age sits in general-practice associate roles rather than specialty.
Texas has the most aged openings of any state in absolute terms. Thrive Pet Healthcare, Mission Pet Health and NVA hold 216 of the 586 live roles; 87 of Thrive's 93 are past four months. Texas does not accept VAULT licence transfers, so these roles are filled by Texas-licensed veterinarians or not at all.
North Carolina matches Texas on share of aged openings with a much smaller market. 26 groups are hiring, 28 roles were posted in the last 30 days, and 143 have been open since spring or earlier. The Triangle and Charlotte carry most of the volume.
Oregon is the West Coast’s stale market: 61 of 107 live openings are past four months and only 9 were posted in the last 30 days, so the backlog is barely moving. 18 groups are hiring, most of them around Portland.
Click any column heading to sort. Type a state to find it.
| State | Live openings | Open 120+ days | Aged share | New in 30 days | Groups hiring |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1California | 656 | 303 | 46% | 125 | 24 |
| 2Texas | 586 | 341 | 58% | 81 | 32 |
| 3Florida | 440 | 226 | 51% | 85 | 27 |
| 4New York | 264 | 127 | 48% | 48 | 26 |
| 5Pennsylvania | 254 | 150 | 59% | 40 | 27 |
| 6North Carolina | 247 | 143 | 58% | 28 | 26 |
| 7Illinois | 230 | 129 | 56% | 32 | 23 |
| 8Virginia | 202 | 107 | 53% | 37 | 27 |
| 9Georgia | 163 | 79 | 48% | 18 | 18 |
| 10Arizona | 147 | 76 | 52% | 22 | 20 |
| 11Ohio | 144 | 67 | 47% | 29 | 24 |
| 12Washington | 141 | 59 | 42% | 20 | 16 |
| 13Colorado | 140 | 63 | 45% | 36 | 19 |
| 14Massachusetts | 139 | 66 | 47% | 22 | 20 |
| 15Michigan | 127 | 51 | 40% | 26 | 22 |
| 16Wisconsin | 123 | 60 | 49% | 23 | 22 |
| 17Maryland | 113 | 77 | 68% | 11 | 19 |
| 18South Carolina | 111 | 61 | 55% | 16 | 20 |
| 19Oregon | 107 | 61 | 57% | 9 | 18 |
| 20New Jersey | 100 | 51 | 51% | 23 | 22 |
| 21Tennessee | 97 | 46 | 47% | 13 | 16 |
| 22Indiana | 88 | 35 | 40% | 16 | 17 |
| 23Connecticut | 82 | 52 | 63% | 15 | 22 |
| 24Missouri | 80 | 38 | 48% | 13 | 17 |
| 25Idaho | 71 | 26 | 37% | 36 | 11 |
| 26Utah | 71 | 30 | 42% | 16 | 15 |
| 27Minnesota | 69 | 32 | 46% | 15 | 13 |
| 28Alabama | 68 | 30 | 44% | 12 | 15 |
| 29Nevada | 56 | 25 | 45% | 17 | 15 |
| 30Kentucky | 52 | 18 | 35% | 9 | 16 |
| 31Oklahoma | 46 | 28 | 61% | 4 | 13 |
| 32Kansas | 43 | 24 | 56% | 6 | 16 |
| 33Iowa | 42 | 17 | 40% | 5 | 12 |
| 34Maine | 39 | 25 | 64% | 8 | 8 |
| 35New Hampshire | 37 | 14 | 38% | 13 | 10 |
| 36Louisiana | 36 | 18 | 50% | 9 | 11 |
| 37Nebraska | 29 | 9 | 31% | 12 | 10 |
| 38New Mexico | 29 | 21 | 72% | 4 | 8 |
| 39Arkansas | 25 | 15 | 60% | 8 | 8 |
| 40Delaware | 21 | 11 | 52% | 2 | 7 |
| 41Rhode Island | 16 | 6 | 38% | 4 | 11 |
| 42District of Columbia | 14 | 3 | 21% | 1 | 4 |
| 43West Virginia | 13 | 6 | 46% | 4 | 6 |
| 44Hawaii | 12 | 5 | 42% | 3 | 3 |
| 45Montana | 11 | 6 | 55% | 4 | 5 |
| 46Mississippi | 10 | 3 | 30% | 6 | 5 |
| 47Alaska | 10 | 5 | 50% | 3 | 5 |
| 48Vermont | 10 | 3 | 30% | 4 | 6 |
| 49South Dakota | 5 | 4 | 80% | 1 | 2 |
| 50Wyoming | 5 | 3 | 60% | 1 | 4 |
| 51North Dakota | 2 | 0 | 0% | 1 | 2 |
Largest groups by live openings (more states in November)
Live = shown as live on the platform on the cut date. Aged = posted 120 or more days before the cut. 26 openings have no state on the record and appear only in the national total.
Live veterinarian openings in the twelve largest metros of Texas, Florida and California, October 2026. More metros in November.
The ten groups with the most live openings nationally. Every opening on the platform belongs to one of 47 corporate groups.
An opening with status Active or Re-added on the PayRecruiter platform on the cut date, in the Veterinary Clinics industry. Behavioral-health and non-clinical roles are excluded. One record per opening; a hospital hiring three associates shows as three.
Posted 120 or more days before the cut date, by the posting date on the record. Reposted roles count from the latest posting, so the aged figure is conservative. “Posted in the last 30 days” uses the same date.
The 47 corporate groups whose openings are on PayRecruiter. Independent practices that don’t list with us are not counted, so the national total understates the market and the aged share describes the corporate segment.
State is taken from the opening’s location. A few records have a mis-parsed city and are excluded from metro counts but kept in state counts. Metros group the cities in that metro area.
We publish counts, not names of hospitals. No figure is based on fewer than five openings. Past editions are not restated; if a method changes, both figures are shown for one month.
One snapshot a month, published the second Thursday. Texas, Florida and California get a one-page cut each month; other states on request from a hospital or veterinary association.
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