Dental Assistants
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for dental assistants is Minnesota, at $65,270. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $54,869. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for dental assistants: Minnesota leads at $65,270 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $54,869 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$48,070
People doing it
387,790
Highest paid
$65,270
MN
Best off, really
$54,869
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,130
Highest tenth
$62,250
Lowest, really
$32,462
UT
States with data
50
National average
$50,200
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $32,462 and $54,869. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 387,790 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $48,070. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $48,070 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Minnesota leads the published set.
- Interstate variation for dental assistants is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $32,462 to $54,869. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in dental assistants is 387,790 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for dental assistants runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Dental Assistants
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,130 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $48,070 |
| Top tenth earn over | $62,250 |
| This salary | $48,070 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Dental Assistants
The national median for this job
$48,070around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,130 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $48,070 |
| Top tenth | $62,250 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Dental Assistants, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Utah · $37,760 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Minnesota · $65,270 |
| Spread | $27,510 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $45,430 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $46,751 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $57,770 | $48,598 | $54,869 |
| MN | $65,270 | $51,709 | $52,541 |
| ME | $60,070 | $47,712 | $49,138 |
| AK | $57,710 | $48,550 | $47,731 |
| NH | $59,530 | $50,012 | $47,475 |
| SD | $47,900 | $40,668 | $46,163 |
| WA | $58,090 | $48,855 | $45,002 |
| IA | $48,430 | $39,865 | $44,910 |
| VT | $52,760 | $43,061 | $44,561 |
| CT | $56,850 | $45,482 | $43,864 |
| NC | $50,380 | $41,159 | $43,721 |
| OH | $47,970 | $40,121 | $43,699 |
| DC | $60,580 | $48,365 | $43,649 |
| OR | $59,490 | $45,325 | $43,282 |
| IN | $48,670 | $39,880 | $43,261 |
| KY | $47,730 | $38,978 | $43,085 |
| TN | $46,720 | $39,720 | $42,933 |
| MA | $57,980 | $46,188 | $42,673 |
| MT | $46,680 | $38,250 | $42,385 |
| OK | $45,740 | $37,374 | $42,333 |
| NE | $46,660 | $38,252 | $42,325 |
| SC | $47,320 | $39,380 | $42,264 |
| WY | $44,990 | $38,329 | $42,191 |
| MI | $48,820 | $39,583 | $42,027 |
| WI | $47,520 | $38,873 | $41,756 |
| LA | $44,090 | $36,670 | $41,508 |
| MO | $45,970 | $37,894 | $41,296 |
| NV | $47,110 | $40,033 | $41,280 |
| AR | $42,830 | $35,468 | $40,999 |
| ID | $45,880 | $37,466 | $40,980 |
| NM | $44,400 | $36,914 | $40,840 |
| RI | $50,150 | $41,015 | $40,444 |
| AZ | $49,000 | $40,729 | $40,284 |
| PA | $47,930 | $39,220 | $40,226 |
| TX | $45,430 | $38,683 | $39,808 |
| IL | $48,610 | $38,977 | $39,428 |
| GA | $46,840 | $38,077 | $39,377 |
| FL | $47,620 | $40,443 | $39,093 |
| CO | $48,340 | $39,603 | $39,063 |
| DE | $47,600 | $38,352 | $38,640 |
| MD | $48,620 | $39,300 | $37,802 |
| VA | $46,670 | $37,756 | $37,476 |
| NJ | $49,390 | $40,684 | $37,365 |
| MS | $39,160 | $32,171 | $36,854 |
| CA | $50,110 | $41,244 | $36,635 |
| NY | $48,110 | $38,835 | $36,084 |
| AL | $39,080 | $31,917 | $35,475 |
| WV | $37,960 | $31,702 | $35,314 |
| HI | $44,720 | $36,126 | $33,263 |
| UT | $37,760 | $30,840 | $32,462 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for dental assistants as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $48,070, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for dental assistants, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Minnesota, at $51,709.
- Levelling out prices for dental assistants is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Utah sits at the bottom on $32,462.
- These are distribution medians for dental assistants, with a national value of $48,070. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for dental assistants model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $51,709, which leads in Minnesota.
- The price deflation applied to dental assistants uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Utah at $32,462. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Utah anchors the bottom at $32,462 — and the two source series are dated independently.