There is no national wage series for dental anesthesiologists.
The closest federal figure is the BLS median for "dentists, all other specialists" — $224,990 a year, or $108.17 an hour, in May 2025 — a catch-all that groups the specialty with several others.
What the data does show clearly: a 2018 survey found 58.7% of surveyed dentist anesthesiologists practicing as mobile providers, the nine residency programs paid an average stipend of $73,085, and the highest published state median for the specialist group was $286,510 in Texas.
National dental anesthesiologist pay: median and percentiles
Start with the honest caveat: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has no wage series for dental anesthesiologists.
BLS publishes separate national series only for general dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthodontists and prosthodontists — every other dental specialty, anesthesiology included, falls into the catch-all category "Dentists, all other specialists" (SOC 29-1029).
That category's national numbers (BLS OEWS, May 2025): a median of $224,990 a year, or $108.17 an hour, across 5,230 jobs, with a mean of $247,930.
The specialty pay ranking places this catch-all next to the specialties that have their own BLS figures.
| Percentile | Annual wage |
|---|---|
| 10th | $104,120 |
| 25th | $166,130 |
| Median | $224,990 |
| 75th | $280,590 |
| 90th | $402,700 |
Source: BLS OEWS, dentists, all other specialists (SOC 29-1029), May 2025 national estimates — a category figure, not a dental anesthesiologist wage.
Two methodology points matter before quoting any of this.
First, coverage: OEWS estimates leave out the self-employed and owners and partners in unincorporated firms, so anyone in the specialty who works that way is not in these figures.
Second, content: the figures are straight-time gross pay.
Production bonuses, commissions and incentive pay are included; overtime, non-production and year-end bonuses, profit-sharing and employer benefit costs are not.
A category median, not a dental anesthesiologist salary
Dental anesthesiologist pay per hour, month and year
The hourly figure BLS published for the category is $108.17 an hour at the median.
OEWS converts annual wages to hourly on a full-time, year-round schedule of 2,080 hours — annual equals hourly times 2,080 — an averaging convention worth remembering here, because it describes a full-time, year-round schedule rather than how any one practice's calendar actually fills.
From the $224,990 annual median, the calendar equivalents are simple division: about $18,749 a month, or about $4,327 a week.
Neither is a BLS-published figure — they are arithmetic on the annual median — and neither is take-home pay.
Read all three as scale, not promise.
They are gross, pre-tax, category-level figures, and for a provider whose contract pays by the case or the booked day, the schedule — not the national table — decides the real number.
Pay by setting: offices of dentists, federal practice, academia and outpatient care
The industry detail BLS published for the category in May 2025 covers a handful of settings, and the split is lopsided: of the 5,230 category jobs, 2,570 were in offices of dentists (median $224,990) and 2,220 in the federal executive branch (median $232,980).
A large share of this category works for the federal government.
| Setting (SOC 29-1029, May 2025) | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Federal executive branch | $232,980 |
| Outpatient care centers | $305,240 |
| Offices of dentists | $224,990 |
| Private sector, cross-industry | $219,780 |
| Colleges, universities and professional schools | $132,680 |
The ownership cut is the closest the published data comes to a private-practice figure: private-sector category jobs (2,810 of them) had a median of $219,780.
That row covers all private employers — it does not separate DSO-owned groups from independent offices.
The table's two extremes: $132,680 in colleges, universities and professional schools against $305,240 in outpatient care centers.
The cited category rows do not answer the hospital or public-health questions directly, so the closest sourced figures are for general dentists: a median of $93,890 a year in general medical and surgical hospitals, and $194,220 in outpatient care centers — the industry grouping that includes community health centers, though BLS does not isolate those centers within it.
Both are general-dentist figures, not specialist ones (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Mobile, academic and operator-anesthetist practice: how the work is structured
The best available picture of how the specialty actually practices is a 2018 peer-reviewed survey of American Society of Dentist Anesthesiologists members (214 responses): 58.7% practiced as mobile providers, 32.2% provided care in an academic environment, and 27.7% worked as operator/anesthetists.
The categories overlap — one respondent can appear in more than one — and the survey predates the specialty's recognition and covers North America, Canada included.
The modes mean different working lives.
A mobile provider travels to the host office and manages the anesthetic there, while the treating dentist does the dental work.
An academic respondent provides care in a teaching environment.
An operator/anesthetist is one clinician acting as both the operating dentist and the anesthetist in the same visit.
The dental anesthesiologist career guide covers mobile practice and the state permits that shape it.
Case mix shows where the work went.
In the same survey, most of the anesthesia delivered went to pediatric dentistry (47.0%), oral and maxillofacial surgery (18.5%) and special-needs patients (16.7%).
Pediatric dentistry is the single largest destination in that list, and oral and maxillofacial surgery is its surgical side — the oral surgeon salary figures show how that side of the chair is paid.
One caution the data itself forces: the survey records where members practiced, not how they were paid or classified.
Nothing in it supports a statement about how many work as independent contractors versus employees.
What do per-case and hourly contracts pay?
The honest answer: our research found no published benchmark.
No tier-1 or tier-2 source we checked — federal wage data, dental workforce surveys, or specialty-association reports — publishes per-case or hourly contract rates for dental anesthesiologists, or an income survey for the specialty at all.
Any specific rate you see quoted online belongs to one arrangement, not to a market.
Two contract structures are worth separating.
A per-case agreement pays for each anesthetized case; a time-based agreement pays a rate for booked hours or days whether or not the schedule fills.
Which structure favors whom depends on case volume, case mix and cancellations — which is why the schedule, the case profile and the cancellation terms belong in the same conversation as the rate itself.
If you are reading this from the practice side — deciding whether to bring anesthesia coverage in rather than whether to sell it — sedation staffing for practices covers the permit levels and the staffing each sedation level carries.
Pay by experience and credential
Our research found no federal data or dental-association survey that tracks pay for this specialty by years of experience — the published material is too thin to rank a fifth year against a fifteenth.
The credential stage is where the pay record is actually clear.
In the 2025-26 CODA/ADA Health Policy Institute survey of advanced dental education, all 9 dental anesthesiology programs paid their residents a stipend, and the average stipend was $73,085; none of the nine charged tuition.
That is training-stage pay, not practicing income.
The specialty itself is young: the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards recognizes 12 dental specialties, and dental anesthesiology's definition was adopted in March 2019.
After training, the broadest private-practice income figure is ADA HPI's 2025 Survey of Dental Practice: a median net income of $258,880 for all specialists in private practice, and $259,550 for owner specialists — with too few responses to publish a figure for employed specialists.
Net income there means personal income after practice expenses and before personal income taxes, a different measure from the BLS wage figures above — and the $258,880 pools every specialty, so it is not an anesthesiologist number.
The highest-paying states for the specialist category
Geography is where the data gets thinnest.
BLS published a median for the "all other specialists" category in only 19 states in May 2025.
The five highest: Texas at $286,510, Oregon at $256,510, Illinois at $250,880, South Carolina at $246,770 and Arizona at $244,170.
Read that list the same way as the national figure.
It is the same catch-all category computed state by state — not an anesthesiologist ranking.
And because no BLS series isolates dental anesthesiologists at any level, there is no anesthesiologist-specific state or metro table to rank against it.
For the states that do appear, the category median is the only state-level anchor the published data offers.
Texas's $286,510 is a category figure, not an anesthesiologist pay expectation.
Confirm any state-specific expectation against actual arrangements in that market.
Dental anesthesiologist jobs on DentistryHires and what they pay
DentistryHires does not run a dedicated dental-anesthesiologist job category — the specialty's openings surface inside dentist and specialist listings when they appear at all.
The closest first-party pay anchor is the dentist-listing data.
As of October 22, 2026, DentistryHires counted 928 live dentist openings.
In the October 6, 2026 snapshot, employers hiring dentists posted an employer median of $240,000 a year (177 employers, 465 listings stating annual pay); the listing median was $215,000 and the middle half ran $197,500 to $300,000.
General and associate dentist listings are combined, the figures are advertised pay rather than earnings, and they describe dentist listings — not anesthesia-specific ones.
When you are ready to look, browse dentist jobs and watch for sedation-focused postings within dentist and specialist listings.
This article is general career information, not financial, legal or clinical advice. Wage figures are category estimates from the sources named and change with each data release.