Dentist Statistics 2026: Job Market, Pay, Demand & Workforce

DentistryHires had 1,463 open dentist listings from 382 employers on October 9, 2026.

218 were first posted in the previous 14 days and 706 in the previous 30 days.

The benefit dentist listings named most often on October 9, 2026 was health insurance, in 69.7% of listings, followed by paid or provided CE (66.5%).

A listing that does not mention a benefit may still offer it.

To browse the openings themselves, see all dentist listings.

The median dentist wage was $170,950 a year in May 2025, and the middle half earned $125,710 to $224,040 (BLS OEWS, SOC 29-1021 (Dentists, General), May 2025).

Employers hiring dentists on DentistryHires advertise a median of $240,000 a year across 177 employers on October 9, 2026; this is advertised pay, not earnings.

For pay by state, percentile and experience, see the dentist salary guide, and for the full distribution of posted pay see our quarterly dentist pay data release.

California had the most open dentist listings on October 9, 2026, with 218 (14.9% of the national total).

Texas followed with 142 (9.7%).

To browse the openings in one state, start with dentist openings in California.

382 employers had open dentist listings on DentistryHires on October 9, 2026, and the five largest posted 54.7% of them.

333 employers (87.2%) had exactly one open dentist listing.

The largest single employer, Pacific Dental Services, posted 21.1% of all dentist listings, so this sample leans toward large dental groups.

There were 205,088 professionally active dentists in the United States in 2025, or 60.0 per 100,000 people (ADA Health Policy Institute, 2025).

Dentist supply per person is flat, not growing: 60.0 dentists per 100,000 people in 2025 against 60.8 in 2015 (ADA Health Policy Institute, 2025).

39.4% of U.S. dentists are women and 21.2% report an ADA-recognized specialty (ADA Health Policy Institute, 2025).

The average dentist retirement age reached 68.7 in 2024, up from 64.7 in 2001 (ADA Health Policy Institute, 2025).

16.1% of U.S. dentists were affiliated with a dental support organization (DSO) in 2024, rising to 26.5% among dentists within 10 years of dental school (ADA Health Policy Institute, 2024 data).

BLS projects employment of general dentists to grow 5.7% from 2025 to 2035, from about 141,900 to 150,000 jobs, with about 4,200 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections, 2025–35).

There are 79 CODA-accredited predoctoral (DDS/DMD) dental programs in the United States (CODA program directory, September 2026).

For how to enter the field, see the dentist career guide.

Listing figures are computed from every active, paid dentist listing on DentistryHires at the time shown, and refreshed every six hours.

Listings on a job board are not a random sample of all dentist jobs, so read them as a picture of current hiring, not of total employment.

Advertised pay is the midpoint of the range an employer posts, or its single figure, and hourly and annual postings are never converted into each other.

The headline is the employer median: each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a group posting hundreds of openings counts once.

A pay figure needs at least 30 listings from 10 employers and is withheld when one employer posted more than half of them.

Federal figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the ADA Health Policy Institute and are quoted as published, with the year in each sentence.

General dentist and associate dentist listings are counted together.

Dentist listings on job boards come mostly from dental support organizations (DSOs), which hire at scale and post every opening, so this sample over-represents DSO jobs compared with the profession as a whole.