This Is the State Where Dog Walkers Make the Most Money

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the State Where Dog Walkers Make the Most Money

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In America, almost 50 million households have a dog. In some homes, people have several. That is well ahead of the next most frequently owned pet. Just over 31 million homes have one cat or more.

Dog ownership can be expensive. Some puppies cost over $1,000. Most people spend between $1,900 and $9,900 each year to keep a dog. Among the major costs are food, beds, toys, grooming, training and visits to the vet. Among the highest costs are for people who do not have a yard or somewhere else where the dog can stay unattended. The price of a dog walker can run as high as $5,200 a year, according to The Spruce Pets.

Dog walkers tend to be poorly paid, and many make little more than what is needed to stay above the poverty level. 365PetInsurance.com’s recently released “Here’s How Much You Can Make as a Dog Walker in Every State study was based on ZipRecruiter wage data. Once the data were gathered, they were averaged by state.

The poverty line observation is accurate. The state where dog walkers make the least is Florida, at $22,915. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, the national poverty line for a family of four is $26,500.
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Interestingly, there is no relationship between median state incomes and what dog walkers make. Tennessee ranks fifth on the list at $31,211, but it ranks 42nd for median household income at $56,071. However, the some of the states where dog walkers make the most are those with the highest median incomes. The highest-paid dog walkers are in Massachusetts, with pay of $31,656, followed by Hawaii and Connecticut.

These are the 10 states where dog walkers make the most:

  • Massachusetts ($31,656)
  • Hawaii ($31,203)
  • Connecticut ($30,887)
  • Wisconsin ($30,409)
  • Tennessee ($30,211)
  • Washington ($30,103)
  • Minnesota ($30,095)
  • Rhode Island ($30,028)
  • Ohio ($29,990)
  • New York ($29,849)

Click here to see which are America’s most popular dog breeds.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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