Dental Hygienist Salary: How Much Do Dental Hygienists Make?

How much does a dental hygienist make a year?

Dental hygienists earned a median of $98,100 a year in May 2025. That figure comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, which counted 222,740 dental hygienists with wage and salary jobs ^[1]. The median is the middle value: half of hygienists earned less, half earned more.

The spread around that middle is wide enough to matter when you plan a budget or compare job offers.

Percentile (May 2025)	Annual wage	What it means
10th	$74,880	10% of hygienists earned this or less
25th	$83,570	One quarter earned this or less
Median (50th)	$98,100	Half earned less, half earned more
75th	$108,480	One quarter earned this or more
90th	$126,050	10% earned this or more

Two cautions apply. First, OEWS covers wage and salary workers, so a hygienist who owns a practice or works as a self-employed contractor is not in these numbers. Second, the survey reports pay, not benefits. Health coverage, paid time off and retirement matching vary by employer and are not part of the wage figure.

Is the pay hourly or yearly, and which number should you use?

BLS publishes both. The national median hourly wage for dental hygienists was $47.16, and the median annual wage was $98,100 ^[1]. The two line up if you multiply the hourly figure by 2,080, the hours in a standard full-time year of 40 hours for 52 weeks.

That arithmetic is a convenient yardstick, not a promise. A hygienist who works four days a week, or who is paid by the hour and takes unpaid time off, will take home less than the full-time equivalent. A hygienist who picks up extra shifts may take home more. Pay arrangements can also differ from office to office (hourly, salaried or a share of production), so ask how a specific offer is calculated before you compare it with a national median.

Use the hourly median when you are weighing a part-time or per-day offer. Use the annual median when you are comparing full-time jobs or planning a household budget.

How does a hygienist's pay compare with other jobs?

Dental hygienists earn well above the typical worker. The median for all occupations in the United States was $50,980 a year in May 2025, so the hygienist median is $47,120 higher, roughly 1.9 times as much ^[1].

The gap shows up in every state where BLS publishes both numbers. Here are four examples:

State	Dental hygienist median	All occupations median
Alabama	$61,160	$45,670
Florida	$91,980	$47,880
Texas	$99,240	$48,620
California	$124,930	$58,240

Pay is not the only thing that makes a career worth considering. O*NET OnLine lists the outlook for dental hygienists as much faster than average growth, with about 15,000 projected job openings from 2025 to 2035 ^[2]. Projections are estimates, and local demand varies. If you are comparing health careers, our registered nurse pay and requirements and physical therapist pages use the same BLS data.

Which states pay dental hygienists the most?

Where you work changes the number more than almost anything else in the survey. Washington, D.C. had the highest median at $137,220, and Alabama had the lowest at $61,160 ^[1]. Among the 50 states, Alaska was highest at $132,690, more than double Alabama's median.

Rank	State	Median annual pay, May 2025
1	District of Columbia	$137,220
2	Alaska	$132,690
3	Washington	$131,160
4	California	$124,930
5	Oregon	$122,080
6	Nevada	$115,290
7	Colorado	$109,580
8	Maryland	$107,830
9	New Jersey	$107,040
10	New York	$106,130

At the other end, the five lowest medians were Alabama ($61,160), Mississippi ($67,280), West Virginia ($73,840), Kentucky ($78,830) and Pennsylvania ($80,610). BLS did not publish a dental hygienist figure for Kansas, so the number is not published and we do not estimate it.

Because every state has its own cost of living and its own typical wage, it also helps to compare hygienists with all workers in the same state. In every state in this table, the hygienist median sits well above the all-occupation median, but the size of the gap differs:

State	Hygienist median	All occupations median	Hygienist premium	Ratio
Alabama	$61,160	$45,670	$15,490	1.34
Pennsylvania	$80,610	$49,690	$30,920	1.62
Ohio	$88,990	$49,380	$39,610	1.80
Florida	$91,980	$47,880	$44,100	1.92
Georgia	$95,490	$48,170	$47,320	1.98
Texas	$99,240	$48,620	$50,620	2.04
New York	$106,130	$59,670	$46,460	1.78
California	$124,930	$58,240	$66,690	2.15
Washington	$131,160	$62,990	$68,170	2.08
Alaska	$132,690	$61,000	$71,690	2.18

The premium column is the dollar difference between the two medians, and the ratio is the hygienist median divided by the all-occupation median; both are our arithmetic on BLS figures ^[1]. Alabama has the lowest hygienist median and also the smallest ratio in this table, while Alaska and California pair high pay with the widest gaps. BLS counted 222,740 dental hygienists nationally; the dataset we use for this page does not give employment counts by state, so we cannot say how many jobs each state has.

A higher paycheck does not always mean more spending power. Housing and everyday costs are higher in many of the top-paying places, and we have not adjusted these figures for cost of living, so treat the ranking as pay, not as purchasing power. You can see every state side by side, and compare it with other careers, on the salary by state tool.

What moves a hygienist's pay above or below the median?

The BLS wage estimates in our data do not break pay out by years of experience, employer type or hours worked, so we cannot put exact dollar amounts on those factors. What the data does show is the spread: a hygienist at the 90th percentile earned $126,050, which is $51,170 more than one at the 10th percentile ($74,880). Several practical factors plausibly explain part of that gap, and you can check each of them in a real job posting:

• Location. As the state table shows, geography is the largest difference we can measure.
• Hours and schedule. Full-time, part-time and per-diem arrangements produce very different yearly totals from the same hourly rate.
• How the office pays. Hourly, salary and production-based pay can differ, and benefits are outside the wage figure.
• Experience and skills. The tasks a hygienist may perform differ by state law, so check the board's rules where you plan to work.

If you are negotiating, bring the state median from BLS, not the national one, and ask the employer how it calculates hourly rate, benefits and time off. The Resources section lists official tools for checking local wages.

How should you read these numbers before you compare offers?

A median is a snapshot of what employers reported paying in one survey period, May 2025. It is not a forecast and it is not an offer. BLS builds OEWS estimates from a survey of employers, which means the figures describe jobs that already exist, in the places and settings that happened to be sampled ^[1]. A small state with few hygienists can swing more from year to year than a large one, which is one reason a state figure is best treated as a reasonable range, not a precise target.

Three habits keep the data useful. Compare the same measure to the same measure: a median to a median, an hourly rate to an hourly rate. Look at the percentiles, not only the middle, because the 25th percentile of $83,570 is a more cautious planning number than the median if you are new to the field. And write down what an offer includes beyond wages, such as health coverage, paid time off and retirement matching, since those are outside the OEWS wage figure.

What does it take to start earning this pay?

Nobody is paid the median on day one, so it helps to know the route. The short version: complete a dental hygiene program, pass the national written exam and a clinical exam, and apply to your state for a license. Our guide to how to become a dental hygienist covers the steps in order; here is what the official sources say about each stage.

Education. O*NET OnLine places the job in Job Zone Three, which typically involves vocational training, related experience or an associate's degree, and reports that 75% of workers say an associate's degree was required to be hired ^[2]. The Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) accredits dental hygiene education programs in the United States, and its site has a "Find a Program" search ^[5]. A study of 52 state dental boards published in the Journal of Dental Hygiene in April 2020 found that nearly all of them (51 of 52, 98.1%), with the exception of Alabama, required completion of a CODA-accredited program ^[3].

The national written exam. The same study found that those boards also required the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination (NBDHE). The Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations (JCNDE) governs the NBDHE, which is given at Pearson VUE test centers; candidates must have their eligibility confirmed by their program director or submit proof of graduation from an accredited program ^[4]. JCNDE says the exam is intended to meet or partly meet the written exam requirement in all states, and tells candidates to check each state board's site for specifics.

The clinical exam. According to the 2020 study, most boards (51 of 52, 98.1%), except Delaware, also required a live-patient clinical board examination. Application fees ranged from $47.70 to $600, and states varied considerably on background checks, age, military status and infection-control training ^[3]. These details change, so use them only as a sketch and check your board.

A state example: Florida. The Florida Board of Dentistry lists the requirements for a dental hygienist license by examination. The applicant must be at least 18, must have graduated from an approved or CODA-accredited dental hygiene program, and must pass the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination, the ADEX dental hygiene licensing exam and a Florida laws and rules exam. Applicants also provide transcripts, current CPR certification and fingerprints for a background check, and the board states that Florida has no reciprocity and does not license by endorsement ^[6]. Another state may differ on every one of those points, which is why we send readers to their own board. Because a license is state-specific, moving a career from one state to another can mean a new application, and the pay in the destination state may differ a lot, as the tables above show. See our training options page for where to start looking.