Dentist Salary: Median Hourly & Annual Data
Hourly
Dentist median wage is $73.70 per hour. The lowest 10% earn $26.56 per hour and those in the upper 10% earn more than $80.00 per hour.
Annually
On an annual basis the median Dentist wage is $153,290. The lowest 10% earn $55,250 per year while the upper 10% earn more than $166,400 per year. These salaries are calculated as a mean or average.
Lowest and Highest Dentist Salary
The lowest paid Dentists earn less approximately $111,150 annually while the highest paid Dentists earn over $240,000 per year
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Top 5 States
The top paying states to earn a dentist salary are Oregon ($80.00), New Hampshire ($117.79), Hawaii ($100.38), Georgia ($98.51), and California ($89.32). These salaries are calculated as an annual mean or average.
Top 5 Metropolitan Areas
The best city or metropolitan areas to earn a dentist salary are Sacramento-Arden Arcade-Roseville, CA, Richmond, VA, Bend, OR, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA, and Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA all report earnings of over $166,000 per year.
Private Practice vs. Employment
According to the ADA there are over 167,769 dentists in private practice earning an average net salary just over $178,000 per year as of 2009. Over half of all the dentists are self-employed or in a private practice setting. It is worth mentioning that average state government dentist salaries are higher ($178.070) than federal government dental salaries ($81,890).
Employment Data
According to the US Department of Labor nationally there are 86,270 Dentists who are employed. The American Dental Association lists the total number of dentists as approximately 181,774.
Where They Work
Of all the dentists employed in the United States 80,000 of them work in the offices of other healthcare practitioners such as other dentists, doctors and etc. This is also where the best dental salaries can be found. The annual mean salary is $135,000 for dentists who worked for other dentists and just over $123,000 for those who worked in the offices of other healthcare practitioners.