Yes.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects dental hygienist employment to grow 8% from 2025 to 2035 — from 225,300 to 243,200 jobs, which BLS calls much faster than average — with an average of 15,000 openings a year.
Hiring data backs the demand up: among dentists who were actively or recently recruiting a hygienist, 91% called it very or extremely challenging.
Here is what the projection, the openings, and the hiring data mean for your job search.
The short answer: BLS projects 8% growth through 2035
Yes — by a wide margin.
In its current projection round, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects dental hygienist employment to grow 8% from 2025 to 2035, from 225,300 jobs to 243,200.
BLS labels that growth rate much faster than the average for all occupations.
Three demand drivers sit behind the number, all from BLS.
An older population is keeping more of its natural teeth, which keeps hygiene appointments in demand.
Research linking oral health to general health pushes in the same direction.
And BLS expects demand to keep growing as state laws increasingly let hygienists work at the top of their training.
Growth is only half the story, though.
A projection describes net new jobs; the hiring market you will actually apply into runs on churn — retirements, career changes, and open postings that refill constantly.
That is the part of the outlook with the most practical meaning for your search, and it's where the annual openings figure comes in.
If you are still deciding whether to enter or stay in the field, pair this page with the dental hygienist career guide, which covers the role, licensure, and training path end to end.
Annual openings: 15,000 a year, and where they come from
BLS projects an average of 15,000 openings for dental hygienists each year across 2025 to 2035.
Read that figure carefully, because it is bigger than the growth story: most of those openings are not new positions.
BLS attributes them mostly to replacing workers who change occupations or leave the labor force.
The replacement wave is measurable.
In the ADA Health Policy Institute's 2022 workforce survey, 31.4% of dental hygienists said they expected to retire within five years or less.
Not every stated retirement happens on schedule, but a cohort that size helps explain why BLS projects a five-figure openings count on top of the net new jobs.
For you as a candidate, replacement demand has a concrete meaning: postings appear constantly even where the profession is not expanding.
On DentistryHires, 1,644 of the 3,048 open dental hygienist listings — 53.9% — had been posted in the previous 30 days as of October 22, 2026.
The board turns over in weeks, not months.
That turnover also means a single week's listings understate the market.
Roles refill after being filled.
Set alerts, keep your application materials ready, and check the dental hygienist jobs board regularly rather than judging the market from one search on one afternoon.
The hygienist shortage, explained
Two things are true at once: the profession is projected to grow, and practices cannot fill the chairs they already have.
In April 2026, the ADA Health Policy Institute reported that only 60% of dentists have an adequate number of dental hygienists on staff.
Among dentists who were actively or recently recruiting a hygienist, 91% said it was very or extremely challenging.
A shortage this persistent is not a simple supply problem, because the supply side has been responding.
First-year enrollment in dental hygiene programs rose 16% from 2020 to 2025, and 2025 saw the most dental hygiene graduates on record.
If more graduates keep entering, why do practices still struggle to hire?
HPI's report adds a third data point: pay.
After adjusting for inflation, the average wage for dental office staff — hygienists included — is down from a few years ago, which the institute links to a fiscal squeeze: reimbursements that have stagnated while practice costs rise.
Add the retirement expectations described above, and you have today's market in one sentence: strong demand, a growing graduate pipeline, and inflation-adjusted pay that is down rather than up.
That is the seeker-side read.
The employer-side view — what the shortage means for staffing models, temp reliance, and retention — is the subject of our dental staffing shortage guide, written for practices.
For you, the shortage shows up as something simpler: every listing on the board is a hygiene chair a practice has not managed to fill.
Where demand is strongest
Nationally, this is overwhelmingly a private-practice job: of the 225,300 hygienist jobs held in 2025, 94% were in offices of dentists, with 1% each in offices of physicians and government (BLS).
Geography matters as much as setting.
On DentistryHires, California had the most open dental hygienist listings on October 22, 2026 — 276, or 9.1% of the national total — followed by Florida (177) and Texas (176).
The widest lens on the market is the board itself: 3,048 open listings from 1,533 employers, spanning every state and the District of Columbia, as of October 22, 2026.
A listing count on one board is not a measure of a state's total demand, and the states at the top are not automatically the easiest markets per applicant — treat the figures as a picture of where hiring is concentrated right now.
The practical move is to read your own market at the commuting-distance level: search the dental hygienist jobs board for your state or metro, count how many practices are hiring near you, and note which of them advertise hourly pay.
Ten relevant openings within driving distance are worth more to your search than a national projection.
What you can do depends on your state
Is it hard to find a hygiene job as a new grad?
Honestly: it depends on your market, and our sources give no direct national measure of new-graduate placement — we won't invent one.
What the data does show is a market with churn working in your favor and a graduate pipeline that keeps getting bigger.
On your side of the ledger: an average of 15,000 openings a year, most of them replacements, means offices somewhere are hiring continuously.
Practices report real difficulty filling hygiene chairs — remember that only 60% of dentists said their hygienist staffing was adequate in April 2026 — so many offices are actively trying to hire.
Against you: the pipeline.
First-year enrollment rose 16% from 2020 to 2025, and the 2025 graduating class was the largest on record, so new licensees are entering the field in larger numbers than in recent years.
In a market where openings concentrate in particular states and metros, the graduates who restrict their search to a single city will feel competition the national numbers do not show.
Schedules are the other adjustment.
BLS notes that many dental hygienists work part time, and that because dentists may hire a hygienist for only a few days a week, some hygienists work for more than one dentist.
Read that before your first search: a two-day offer at one office alongside a two-day offer at another fits the structure BLS describes — it is not, on its own, a signal that the market is weak.
Practical moves for a first search: apply to postings that advertise hourly pay so offers are comparable, stay open to part-time and multi-office arrangements, and lean on the churn — with more than half of listings posted in the previous 30 days, a board you check weekly beats one you check twice a year.
What the numbers get personal about is pay, and that's the next section.
What this means for pay
Demand is strong; whether it moves your paycheck is more complicated.
The headline figures: BLS puts the median dental hygienist wage at $98,100 a year — $47.16 an hour — for May 2025, with the middle half earning $83,570 to $108,480 and the highest-paid 10% above $126,050.
Against that, employers hiring on DentistryHires advertised a median of $52.50 an hour on October 22, 2026 (974 employers, 1,951 listings stating hourly pay).
That second figure is advertised pay, not earnings, and it excludes bonuses and production pay unless an employer folds them into the posted range.
The tension worth understanding is that demand has not fully translated into wages.
HPI reported average hourly pay for hygienists across dentists' practices of $49.20 in 2025, and, adjusted for inflation, average dental-office staff wages are down from a few years ago.
A market where 91% of recruiting dentists call hiring very or extremely challenging while real wages soften is a reason to negotiate on the specifics of an offer rather than assume scarcity alone sets the rate.
For the full distribution — by state, percentile, and hourly equivalent — see the dental hygienist salary page.
For how the whole trade-off stacks up against the field's demands, read the pros and cons of dental hygiene.
This article is general career information, not legal, financial, or medical advice. Projections and wage statistics are national figures; what you may practice, and what an office pays, vary by state and employer.