---
title: "Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Technician"
description: "A credentialed veterinary technician who specializes in emergency triage and intensive care nursing for critically ill and injured animals."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/veterinary-emergency-and-critical-care-technician"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Technician

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-2056 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-2056.00

A credentialed veterinary technician who specializes in emergency triage and intensive care nursing for critically ill and injured animals.

Also advertised as: VTS (ECC); Veterinary ICU Technician; Critical Care Vet Tech; Veterinary Technician Specialist in Emergency and Critical Care.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $47,380 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $22.78/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $35,710 to $63,180, with the middle half between $38,910 and $57,650
- **Total US employment:** 129,140
- **Typical entry education:** Associate's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +9.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 13,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 59/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 129,140 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $35,710 |
| 25th | $38,910 |
| 50th (median) | $47,380 |
| 75th | $57,650 |
| 90th | $63,180 |
| Mean (average) | $49,120 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $61,270 | $55,750 | 120 |
| CA | $60,630 | $54,760 | 11,310 |
| WA | $59,740 | $55,825 | 2,290 |
| NY | $59,010 | $54,679 | 5,350 |
| MN | $57,270 | $58,071 | 3,560 |
| OR | $55,810 | $53,995 | 1,120 |
| VA | $52,090 | $51,521 | 2,790 |
| CT | $50,950 | $49,175 | 1,690 |
| ME | $50,810 | $52,354 | 910 |
| NV | $50,250 | $50,261 | 1,120 |
| MI | $49,710 | $51,664 | 2,550 |
| CO | $49,650 | $48,180 | 3,720 |
| MA | $49,540 | $46,843 | 3,990 |
| VT | $49,490 | $50,522 | 390 |
| NJ | $49,050 | $45,081 | 2,910 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/veterinary-emergency-and-critical-care-technician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/veterinary-emergency-and-critical-care-technician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 131,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 143,800 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 12,300 jobs, or +9.4%. Much faster than average: 9.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 13,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Associate's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 41.3% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 26.4% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 14.6% |
| Some College Courses | 7.4% |
| Doctoral Degree | 5.5% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 4.9% |

## What the work involves

- Triage incoming emergency patients
- Place intravenous catheters and draw blood samples
- Run blood gases, lactate and other point-of-care tests
- Assist with CPR and emergency procedures
- Administer fluid therapy, transfusions and medications
- Monitor ICU patients and report changes to veterinarians
- Maintain crash carts and emergency equipment

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.71 |
| I — Investigative | 5.34 |
| C — Conventional | 4.56 |
| S — Social | 3.95 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 83.5 |
| ISTP | 75.4 |
| ISFJ | 74.6 |
| INTJ | 65.8 |
| ESTJ | 63.4 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Veterinary Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/veterinary-technician) — median $47,380
- [Veterinary Assistant and Laboratory Animal Caretaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/veterinary-assistant-and-laboratory-animal-caretaker) — median $38,150
- [Surgical Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/surgical-assistant) — median $66,800
- [Medical Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-assistant) — median $45,690
- [Cardiovascular Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiovascular-technologist-and-technician) — median $74,310
- [Surgical Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/surgical-technologist) — median $64,650
- [Emergency Medical Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medical-technician) — median $44,470
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technologist) — median $62,930
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technician) — median $62,930
- [Radiologic Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/radiologic-technologist-and-technician) — median $80,110

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/veterinary-emergency-and-critical-care-technician