Dental practices and dental service organizations hiring dental assistants on DentistryHires post a median of $23.50 an hour, across 1,305 employers and 2,651 listings that state hourly pay (October 6, 2026).
The middle half of those listings offer $21.00 to $26.00.
This is advertised pay, not earnings: for what dental assistants take home, see our dental assistant salary guide.
Listings per pay band.
The highlighted band holds the employer median of $23.50/h.
Employer median of posted hourly pay for each role with at least 30 listings and 10 employers stating it.
States with at least 30 listings and 10 employers stating hourly pay.
Other states are too thin to report on their own.
| State | Employer median | Listing median | Listings | Employers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | $31.50/h | $30.00/h | 52 | 23 |
| Massachusetts | $27.50/h | $27.50/h | 78 | 60 |
| Oregon | $27.50/h | $26.75/h | 36 | 22 |
| New Jersey | $26.00/h | $26.00/h | 62 | 51 |
| Washington | $26.00/h | $26.50/h | 91 | 54 |
| California | $26.00/h | $26.00/h | 508 | 220 |
| Maryland | $24.75/h | $23.50/h | 56 | 31 |
| Colorado | $24.25/h | $25.00/h | 103 | 46 |
| New York | $23.75/h | $23.50/h | 106 | 78 |
| North Carolina | $23.50/h | $22.75/h | 52 | 34 |
| Florida | $23.00/h | $22.00/h | 195 | 98 |
| Illinois | $23.00/h | $22.50/h | 109 | 64 |
| Indiana | $23.00/h | $22.50/h | 32 | 23 |
| Pennsylvania | $22.50/h | $22.75/h | 78 | 43 |
| Virginia | $22.50/h | $23.00/h | 118 | 72 |
| Wisconsin | $22.50/h | $23.00/h | 31 | 22 |
| Georgia | $22.50/h | $22.50/h | 53 | 26 |
| Nevada | $22.50/h | $24.00/h | 37 | 21 |
| Tennessee | $22.13/h | $23.25/h | 42 | 20 |
| Arizona | $22.00/h | $21.50/h | 72 | 35 |
| Ohio | $22.00/h | $21.00/h | 65 | 33 |
| Missouri | $22.00/h | $21.00/h | 35 | 17 |
| Michigan | $21.25/h | $21.00/h | 46 | 34 |
| Texas | $20.00/h | $21.00/h | 300 | 114 |
Listings that post an annual salary instead show an employer median of $50,000 a year (19 employers, 39 listings; middle half $47,081–$57,485).
That is a small sample, so treat it as indicative.
Posted pay is what employers advertise to attract applicants.
It often runs above government wage estimates for the same occupation, because listings skew toward open, competitive roles and the ranges often include the top of a pay band.
Our dental assistant salary guide blends listing data with Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data to estimate what people in the role actually earn.
Use this page for what the market is offering today, and the guide for typical earnings.
All figures come from the 11,591 active job listings on DentistryHires on October 6, 2026, posted by 4,377 employers.
We removed 594 exact duplicates (same employer, title, city, state and pay range) first.
Posted pay is the midpoint of the range an employer advertises, or its single figure.
Hourly and annual postings are analyzed separately and never converted into each other.
Values below $5 or above $500 an hour, or below $15,000 or above $1,000,000 a year, are treated as data errors and dropped.
Employer median is our headline: we take each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a group posting hundreds of openings counts once.
The plain listing median is shown alongside.
We suppress any figure built on fewer than 30 listings or 10 employers, and flag anything under 100 listings as a small sample.
Pay medians use only listings whose pay we can read as a number from a structured field; listings that give pay only in the description count toward the “states pay” shares but not toward medians.
The largest single employer accounts for 22.8% of dental assistants listings with hourly pay, which is why the employer median is the headline figure.
These are advertised rates, not earnings.
They exclude bonuses and production pay unless an employer folds them into the posted range, and listings on a job board are not a random sample of all dental jobs.
Figures are frozen for the Q4 2026 release and refreshed quarterly; earlier releases are not revised.
Corrected October 6, 2026: Starting with this release, a listing also counts as stating pay when its description gives a dollar wage, salary or pay range.
The Q3 2026 release (September 24, 2026) counted structured pay fields only and reported that 56.9% of listings stated pay, an undercount, because many employers put the range only in the description text.
Pay medians were and remain based on structured pay fields only.
DentistryHires, “Dental Assistant Pay in Job Listings: Q4 2026 Data,” Q4 2026 data release, listings snapshot of October 6, 2026. https://www.dentistryhires.com/research/data/dental-assistant-pay/
More first-party data: Dental Hygienist Pay in Job Listings · Dentist Pay in Job Listings · Dental Pay Transparency.
All research: DentistryHires Research.
