Dental industry statistics 2026: the numbers, with sources

1. Dentists

205,088 dentists were professionally active in the United States in 2025, by the American Dental Association's count. That is 60.0 for every 100,000 people. A year earlier the ADA counted 202,485, so the profession added about 2,600 dentists in twelve months, a little under 1.3%.

39.4% of them are women. In 2010 the share was under a quarter. Among dentists under 35 women are already the majority, so the overall figure keeps rising as older cohorts retire.

21.2% work in one of the ADA-recognized specialties. The rest are general dentists.

The retirement number is the one to watch. The average dentist now retires at 68.7, four years later than in 2001, and works a 41.3-year career. A third of the workforce is 55 or older. They are not leaving yet, but the year they do, the supply line in section 4 will matter more than it does today.

2. Practices and who owns them

135,665 dental offices operated in the United States in 2023, by the Census count the ADA uses. The number is smaller than the number of dentists because a practice can hold several.

72.5% of dentists owned their practice in 2023. In 2005 it was 84.7%. Ownership has fallen about half a point a year for two decades.

Solo practice was 36% in 2022 and 34% two years later. One point a year. California has the most solo dentists, at 44%, and Minnesota the fewest, at 18%. If you sell to practice owners, Minnesota is a shorter list than its population suggests.

3. DSOs

16.1% of dentists were affiliated with a dental support organization in 2024. In 2015 it was 7.2%. The share has more than doubled in nine years.

26.5% of dentists ten or fewer years out of school work for a DSO. That is the figure that explains the trend. Each graduating class joins at about one and a half times the rate of the workforce it enters.

Orthodontics is the most consolidated specialty and prosthodontics the least. Our own file tags 15,730 practice rows with a DSO or group name, 12.9% of rows, across 4,459 distinct groups. The ADA measures dentists and we measure locations, which is why the two percentages differ. For the names of the largest groups, see the DSO guide.

4. Dental schools and graduates

7,015 dentists graduated from US dental schools in 2025, up from 6,872 the year before. The ADA lists 79 accredited schools. Applicants for the fall 2024 class numbered 12,491 and 6,719 enrolled, so a little more than one applicant in two gets a seat.

28,925 students were enrolled across all four years in 2025-26. Ten years earlier it was 24,117. The pipeline has grown 20% in a decade, faster than the workforce it feeds.

$46,845 is the first-year cost of tuition and fees at a public school for a resident in 2025-26. For a private school it is $90,090. Four years of that is the debt that pushes a new graduate toward a DSO salary over a practice loan.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects dentist employment to grow 4% from 2024 to 2034, with about 4,500 openings a year, most of them replacements for retirees. Graduates outnumber projected openings by about 2,500 a year, which is one reason the per-capita ratio keeps rising.

5. Income and billings

$215,320 was the average net income of a general dentist in private practice in 2025, by the ADA's Survey of Dental Practice. A specialist averaged $346,520.

$965,660 is what the average general practitioner billed in 2025. Specialists billed $1,213,040. Net income is about 22% of gross for a general dentist, which is the margin every vendor on this site is selling into. The other 78% goes to staff, the lease, the lab, supplies and the equipment loan.

The BLS median wage for dentists was $179,210 in May 2024. The ADA number is higher because it counts practice owners' profit and the BLS number counts wages paid to employees. Both are right. They measure different dentists.

6. Hygienists and assistants

222,740 dental hygienists and 387,790 dental assistants work in the United States, by the latest BLS employment count. There are more hygienists than dentists and nearly two assistants for every dentist.

$94,260 was the median hygienist salary in May 2024, or $47.16 an hour on the ADA's 2025 reading of the BLS data. Assistants earn a median of $23.11 an hour.

Hygienist employment is projected to grow 7% from 2024 to 2034, with 15,300 openings a year, against the 4% and 4,500 for dentists. The staffing shortage dentists talk about is a hygienist shortage. Three openings for every dentist opening, and a two-year program to fill each one.

7. What the country spends

$174 billion went to dental services in the United States in 2023, by the federal National Health Expenditure accounts as read by the ADA. That is 3.6% of all health spending.

Spending rose about $4 billion over 2022. More than $3 billion of the increase came from Medicare, through the dental benefits that Medicare Advantage plans now add. The private dental market grew a little. The public one grew a lot.

Divide $174 billion by 135,665 offices and the average location takes in about $1.28 million a year. That squares with the billings in section 5 once you allow for multi-dentist offices.

8. Where the dentists are

7,443 dental health professional shortage areas existed on December 31, 2025, by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. HRSA estimates it would take 10,744 more dentists to clear them. That is a year and a half of graduates, placed in the towns graduates do not move to.

Washington, D.C. has two and a half times the dentists per person of Arkansas. The density map carries the figure for every state and county, and the state table has practice counts. California alone holds 19,420 of the practices in our file, Texas 10,354 and Florida 8,818. The three states are a third of the market.

9. What our own file says

The figures above come from surveys and government counts. The ones below come from a list of named practices, each with an address, built from the NPI registry and Google and re-verified before every release. The two sets will never match exactly. The Census counts establishments that file taxes as dental offices. We count locations that answer the phone as one.

116,866 practice locations against the Census's 135,665 establishments is 86%. Some of the gap is offices with no public listing. Some is how each side defines an office. How each row is built is on the methodology page.