Dentist Salary by Metro

BLS's metro-level dataset behind this page (SOC 29-1021, May 2025) publishes general-dentist wages as annual medians, and that's the figure this page leads with.

Nationally that annual median is $170,950.

Applied metro by metro, the same BLS release spans roughly $114,470 to $241,850 a year across the metros where its estimate is reliable — more than double from the lowest- to the highest-paying market.

BLS attaches a relative standard error to every wage estimate; metros where it reaches 10% or more are left out of these rankings (their published figures stay in BLS's tables, but they are too imprecise to rank).

Converted to an hourly rate — the annual figure divided by 2,080, the standard full-time-equivalent hours in a year — that's about $55.03 to $116.27 an hour, against a $82.19 national hourly figure.

See the full dentist salary guide for the national percentile breakdown (10th through 90th) behind that median.

BLS suppresses a wage cell whenever too few dentists are surveyed in a metro to publish a reliable estimate, and general dentistry is a smaller occupation per metro than roles like dental assisting or dental hygiene — so more dentist cells get suppressed.

That's why this page covers 232 metros rather than every metro area in the country.

Six states have no dentist metro estimate published at all in this release: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming.

That's a gap in what BLS publishes, not a signal those states have no dentists or pay them nothing — dentists practice and get paid in all fifty states.

If your state is one of the six, the closest available figure is the state-level median where BLS publishes one.

Sorted by BLS's metro-level annual median, the highest-paying markets for dentists with a reliable estimate span the Southeast, the Midwest, and a handful of unexpected smaller metros — not just the largest cities:

• North Port, FL — $241,850/yr (~$116.27/hr)
• Memphis, TN — $238,040/yr (~$114.44/hr)
• Evansville, IN — $225,620/yr (~$108.47/hr)
• Atlanta, GA — $222,690/yr (~$107.06/hr)
• Hanford, CA — $222,430/yr (~$106.94/hr)
• Minneapolis, MN — $219,980/yr (~$105.76/hr)
• Trenton, NJ — $216,750/yr (~$104.21/hr)
• Rockford, IL — $214,670/yr (~$103.21/hr)

Memphis and Minneapolis sit inside Tennessee and Minnesota — both top-5 states in DentistryHires' state-by-state dentist ranking — while Atlanta anchors Georgia's statewide median.

The pattern generally holds at the metro level: states that rank high overall tend to have a high-paying anchor metro, though not always their largest city.

At the other end, the lowest reliable metros for dentists include some large, well-known markets alongside smaller ones:

• Tyler, TX — $125,990/yr (~$60.57/hr)
• Riverside, CA — $125,230/yr (~$60.21/hr)
• Olympia, WA — $123,460/yr (~$59.36/hr)
• Muskegon, MI — $123,240/yr (~$59.25/hr)
• Cleveland, TN — $122,910/yr (~$59.09/hr)
• Boise City, ID — $119,550/yr (~$57.48/hr)
• Altoona, PA — $117,110/yr (~$56.30/hr)
• Lake Charles, LA — $114,470/yr (~$55.03/hr)

Houston is the notable absence — BLS publishes a $98,570 median there, the lowest of any metro, but rates that wage estimate at ±14.5%, too imprecise to rank; compare it with the Texas statewide figure.

A lower metro number isn't a sign the market is oversaturated or that the job doesn't pay there; it reflects local wage-survey results for that specific release, and it's worth weighing against current listings rather than treating as a permanent ceiling.

Search interest skews toward household-name cities more than toward the highest-paying metros above, so here's what BLS data implies for ten of the largest U.S. metros:

• New York, NY — $190,010/yr (~$91.35/hr)
• Chicago, IL — $156,100/yr (~$75.05/hr)
• Los Angeles, CA — $139,990/yr (~$67.30/hr)
• Houston, TX — $98,570/yr (~$47.39/hr; BLS wage error ±14.5%)
• Phoenix, AZ — $194,180/yr (~$93.36/hr; BLS wage error ±10.3%)
• Miami, FL — $172,210/yr (~$82.79/hr)
• Boston, MA — $181,150/yr (~$87.09/hr; BLS wage error ±19.7%)
• Denver, CO — $168,620/yr (~$81.07/hr)
• Atlanta, GA — $222,690/yr (~$107.06/hr)
• Washington, DC — $184,540/yr (~$88.72/hr)

Atlanta outpaces the $170,950 national median by a wide margin, while Los Angeles and Chicago sit below it; the Houston, Phoenix and Boston figures carry BLS error margins of 10% or more, so read them loosely — a reminder that the biggest metro by population isn't a reliable proxy for the highest dentist pay.

Three forces drive the spread between $114,470 and $241,850 a year. Local demand relative to supply matters more for dentists than cost of living alone — a metro with fewer practicing dentists per capita, or higher patient volume per practice, tends to post a higher median regardless of how expensive that metro is to live in, which is part of why lower-cost Southeastern and Midwestern metros show up near the top of this list.

Practice model shifts where an individual lands inside their metro's range far more than geography alone.

Owners and partners take practice profit on top of clinical pay, while associates are typically paid a percentage of production or a daily rate — see DSO vs. private practice and how associate dentists are paid for how that split works. Specialty is the third lever, and it's a separate one entirely — this page covers general-dentist pay only; which dental specialty pays the most ranks the specialist codes BLS tracks separately, and none of those figures are mixed into the medians above.

This page covers the metros with a published BLS estimate; if yours isn't listed, the most useful next step is the dentist salary guide, which pairs the national percentile breakdown with a full state-by-state directory — including states like Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Texas that cover several of the metros above.

None of this changes what any individual practice actually offers, so use these figures as context for negotiating or evaluating an offer, not a promise — the fastest way to confirm your local number is comparing current dentist job listings in your metro.

This article is general career information, not financial advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS averages for general dentists (SOC 29-1021); hourly figures are DentistryHires' calculation (annual ÷ 2,080), not a separately published BLS hourly series. Actual pay varies by employer, ownership structure, specialty, and experience.