Data Sources

Verified national data: BLS OEWS

Our verified baseline is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, reference period May 2025. OEWS is a large semi-annual employer survey and is U.S. public-domain data. We read its published figures directly from the official BLS workbook with our importer (no hand-transcription) and label them Verified · BLS. These cover general dentists (SOC 29-1021), dental hygienists (29-1292), dental assistants (31-9091), orthodontists (29-1023), oral & maxillofacial surgeons (29-1022), prosthodontists (29-1024), and dental laboratory technicians (51-9081).

The BLS top-code

OEWS censors the very highest wages at a top-code (historically “≥ $239,200”). BLS raised that cap for May 2025, so the top dental specialists now publish as real national medians rather than a floor. A few small state and metro cells are still reported only as the top-code; where that happens we show the verified floor(e.g. “$239,200+”) and say the true figure is higher, rather than invent a number.

State & metro data

Most of our state and metro figures are verified BLS OEWS local wage data (May 2025), imported directly from the official local extracts. Where BLS does not publish a given role for a given area, we fall back to a clearly-labeled modeled estimate: the verified national median scaled by a documented labor-cost index. We explain the exact method on the methodology page. Note that OEWS wages cover employed workers, so a metro or state dentist median reflects associate/employee pay and excludes practice owners.

What we deliberately do not claim

• No precise median above the BLS top-code — where a cell is still censored, we show the verified floor only.
• No state or metro value where BLS doesn't publish one and our model isn't applicable — we say so.
• No fabricated dental-specific figure for roles BLS doesn't cleanly track (e.g. pediatric dentist, dental office manager) — those stay labeled modeled or proxy.
• No employer pay data, no job listings, and no fabricated figures of any kind.

User-submitted data

Dental professionals can contribute pay anonymously on the submit your salary page. Individual submissions are never published; figures would appear only as de-identified aggregates above a sample-size threshold, clearly labeled as community data.

For the full technical detail, see methodology. For how we label and review everything, see our editorial policy.