How DentalSalary works

DentalSalary exists to answer a simple question well: what does this dental role actually pay? We turn public wage data into fast, readable benchmarks — by role, location, and specialty — and we're honest about where a number is solid and where it's an estimate.

Two kinds of numbers

Everything on the site falls into one of two clearly-labeled buckets:

• Verified — figures read directly from BLS OEWS. This covers national role medians and mostof our state and metro figures, which use BLS's own local wage extracts. Marked “Verified.”
• Modeled estimates— used only where BLS doesn't publish a given role for a given place. We derive these from the verified national benchmark and a documented local wage index, mark them “Modeled estimate,” and never present them as an exact local survey.

Where our locations come from

We publish a page for every U.S. metro area where BLS reports dental wages for at least two dental occupations — 377 metros, from New York to Casper. We don't choose metros by search demand: the list is generated straight from the BLS data file, so a metro exists here because BLS published it, not because it looked like a good keyword. Where BLS suppresses a figure — which it does for small samples, to protect confidentiality — that role simply doesn't get a page in that metro. A missing page means missing data, and we'd rather show nothing than fill the gap with a number we made up.

How the local wage index is calculated

The wage index is the multiplier behind every modeled local figure, so it's worth being precise about. For each metro we take the dental wages BLS doespublish there — general dentist, dental hygienist, dental assistant — and compare each with its national counterpart. The average of those ratios is the metro's index. San Jose comes out around 1.40, Gadsden, Alabama around 0.66.

Two things follow. First, the index is measured from real dental pay in that metro, not borrowed from a general cost-of-living table — dental wages don't track rent, and assuming they do produces confidently wrong numbers. Second, it's only ever used to fill gaps: if BLS publishes the role in that metro, we show the published figure and the index is never applied. State indices work the same way.

That label appears next to the figure, so you're never guessing whether you're looking at verified BLS data or a model. One caveat worth knowing: OEWS wages count employed workers, so a state or metro dentist median reflects associate/employee pay and excludes practice owners (who typically earn more).

What we don't do

• We don't invent salary numbers — if we can't source it, we don't publish it.
• We don't dress a model up as a survey, or a floor up as a median.
• We don't publish any individual's submitted salary — only de-identified aggregates, if at all.
• We don't let advertising or sponsorship touch a salary figure.

How to use it

Start at a role for the national benchmark, narrow to your state or metro for a local estimate, and use the calculator to adjust for your experience and setting. For the bigger picture — how offers, hours, and practice type change the math — see our guides.

Found an error?

Accuracy is the point. If a figure looks wrong, tell us on the correctionspage — we'd rather fix it than defend it. For the full detail on our sources and labels, see data sources and our editorial policy.