Why is there a veterinarian shortage?

There is a veterinarian shortage because demand for veterinary care has grown faster than the profession can produce and retain veterinarians. Projections put new graduates at roughly 76% of total need through 2032. At the same time, a meaningful share of the people already in practice are planning to leave it. Both things are happening at once.

Each of those causes is real, and none of them has a single fix. Some are national and slow to move. Others are local and can be addressed inside a practice this year. What follows is what the evidence currently shows about each one, and where the honest limits of that evidence sit.

What does the veterinarian shortage actually look like?

On the ground it rarely announces itself as a shortage. It shows up as a job posting that stays open for eight months. A practice that stops taking new clients. An emergency case referred two hours away because the nearer hospital has no overnight cover. A schedule built for four doctors being run by three.

It is also uneven. A companion animal practice in a large metro may be fully staffed while a mixed animal practice ninety minutes away cannot fill a position at any salary. National averages hide most of what matters here.

Are there enough new veterinarians coming through?

Not currently, on the available projections. A study commissioned by the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges put employment at 125,465 veterinarians in 2022 and projected it reaching 150,278 by 2032. Counting both growth and replacement of those who retire or leave, it estimated total need at 70,092 new veterinarians over that period, against 52,926 projected graduates after attrition. That leaves a gap of 17,166, or about three quarters of need being met.

Schools are expanding. Several new programs have opened or been announced, and existing classes have grown. That is a real response and it will help.

It is also slow and imprecise. A seat added this year produces a licensed veterinarian four or more years later, by which point demand has moved again. The same study's authors recommended at least 1,600 additional seats by the early 2030s while explicitly cautioning against expanding enough to close the entire gap, on the grounds that overshooting creates its own problems for graduates entering the market.

So expansion is part of the answer. It is not a fast one, and nobody serious is claiming it is the whole answer.

Why do veterinarians leave clinical practice?

This is the part that gets less coverage than enrolment numbers, and arithmetically it matters just as much. Every person who stays is a person who does not need replacing.

AAHA's Stay, Please study found around 30% of veterinary practice team members planning to leave their current role. Half of those intended to leave clinical practice entirely rather than move to another hospital. Of those who go, only about one in ten said they would consider coming back.

That last figure is the one worth sitting with. Recruitment pulls from a pool. Attrition drains it more or less permanently. A practice that keeps three people it would otherwise have lost has done something a graduating class cannot do for another four years.

The reasons are not mysterious. The study examined burnout, compassion fatigue, work-life balance and financial concerns. Reporting on the same research highlighted fair pay and feeling appreciated as the factors most associated with staying. We have written separately about what burnout in veterinary medicine actually looks like and which parts of it a practice can realistically change.

Why are rural and food animal practices hit hardest?

Because it is a different problem wearing the same name.

The USDA's Economic Research Service published an analysis of rural shortage areas in September 2026. Looking at sixteen years of Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program nominations, it identified 453 counties that had been nominated as shortage areas nine or more times, which it terms persistent shortage counties. In 2024, 31% of designated shortage areas were filled, 10% had applications that were not awarded, and 59% received no applications at all.

That distinction matters. In much of rural America the constraint is not that veterinarians were unavailable. It is that nobody applied.

The economics go some way to explaining it. The same report found average revenue at rural food and mixed animal practices fell 22% between 2021 and 2025, to $1.54 million per practice, while urban equivalents rose 19%. Full-time equivalent veterinarians per rural food and mixed animal practice fell 13% over the same period. Loan repayment has risen in response, with the maximum award going from $25,000 to $40,000 a year in 2026.

There is a hopeful signal in the same data. Only 4% of AVMA members worked in food animal practice in 2025, and 4% of new graduates planned to enter it, but mixed animal practice accounted for 17% of graduates against 8% of current members. More new veterinarians are choosing mixed practice than the existing workforce would suggest.

Where does the working day actually go?

The three causes above are national, structural and slow. This one is smaller, and it is the one a practice can act on without waiting for anybody.

A practice's real capacity is not its headcount. It is three things multiplied together.

Documentation sits squarely in that third column. Records, discharge notes, referral letters, lab follow-up and callbacks are not clinically difficult, but all of it has to be done, and most of it gets pushed to whatever time is left over. Which usually means after the last appointment, or at home.

We would rather not put a national figure on how many hours that is, because we have not seen one measured rigorously enough to quote. What exists is individual experience, and that varies enormously by practice type and caseload. One VetSkribe user, equine veterinarian Dr. Philippe Benoit, puts his own numbers at two to four minutes of dictation per horse against 90 to 120 minutes of report writing in the evening. That is one practitioner's experience in one discipline rather than a study, and it varies with practice type and caseload.

It is worth being precise about what this changes. Shortening the documentation tail gives the people you already employ some of their evenings back. That makes it a retention lever, and retention is the part of this problem that moves fastest.

What can a practice change now?

Nothing on this list fixes the national supply gap. All of it is within reach of a single practice inside a quarter.

• Measure where the hours actually go. Most practices have never counted non-clinical time. You cannot manage a number you have never looked at.
• Treat pay and recognition as retention infrastructure. The AAHA research put fair pay and feeling appreciated near the top of what keeps people. Both are cheaper than recruiting a replacement.
• Give credentialed technicians the work they are credentialed for. Underused technicians are both a capacity loss and a retention risk.
• Protect admin time in the schedule. If charting has no slot, it happens after hours by default.
• Shorten the documentation tail. Templates that match how your team charts, whatever tool produces them, save time on every single appointment.
• Hold exit conversations and act on them. The people leaving will tell you why, if anybody asks before the last day.

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