Dental Hygienists
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia comes first for dental hygienists on every measure. $137,220 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $100,240 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For dental hygienists, the District of Columbia's $137,220 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $100,240. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$98,100
People doing it
222,740
Highest paid
$137,220
DC
Best off, really
$100,240
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$74,880
Highest tenth
$126,050
Lowest, really
$54,115
AL
States with data
50
National average
$98,990
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $54,115 to $100,240.
- Roughly 222,740 people hold this job nationally, earning $98,100 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $98,100 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. The District of Columbia tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in dental hygienists pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $54,115 to $100,240, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- 222,740 are employed nationally in dental hygienists, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for dental hygienists. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Dental Hygienists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $74,880 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $98,100 |
| Top tenth earn over | $126,050 |
| This salary | $98,100 |
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 Hygienists
The national median for this job
$98,100around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $74,880 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $98,100 |
| Top tenth | $126,050 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Dental Hygienists, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $61,160 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $137,220 |
| Spread | $76,060 |
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 | $99,240 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $102,125 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $132,690 | $101,960 | $100,240 |
| WA | $131,160 | $100,914 | $92,955 |
| NV | $115,290 | $89,937 | $92,737 |
| DC | $137,220 | $96,361 | $86,965 |
| SD | $92,210 | $73,700 | $83,659 |
| OK | $97,580 | $73,587 | $83,351 |
| MT | $98,440 | $73,882 | $81,869 |
| ND | $90,530 | $72,012 | $81,303 |
| TX | $99,240 | $78,645 | $80,932 |
| OR | $122,080 | $84,576 | $80,763 |
| NM | $95,940 | $72,954 | $80,713 |
| CO | $109,580 | $81,806 | $80,691 |
| CA | $124,930 | $89,129 | $79,169 |
| NC | $97,850 | $74,272 | $78,896 |
| NE | $92,580 | $70,451 | $77,953 |
| ID | $94,650 | $71,253 | $77,936 |
| WI | $96,540 | $72,470 | $77,843 |
| MN | $103,970 | $76,426 | $77,656 |
| AR | $86,760 | $67,114 | $77,581 |
| IN | $92,330 | $71,090 | $77,117 |
| MO | $92,750 | $70,658 | $77,001 |
| AZ | $101,010 | $77,768 | $76,918 |
| MD | $107,830 | $79,847 | $76,802 |
| NH | $101,250 | $80,059 | $75,997 |
| OH | $88,990 | $69,704 | $75,920 |
| WY | $85,130 | $68,719 | $75,642 |
| VT | $97,470 | $73,078 | $75,622 |
| VA | $102,950 | $76,096 | $75,531 |
| LA | $85,240 | $66,625 | $75,415 |
| ME | $97,680 | $72,206 | $74,365 |
| GA | $95,490 | $71,841 | $74,293 |
| TN | $84,640 | $68,374 | $73,906 |
| DE | $98,910 | $73,116 | $73,666 |
| IA | $84,010 | $65,350 | $73,620 |
| IL | $96,670 | $72,197 | $73,033 |
| NJ | $107,040 | $79,504 | $73,018 |
| NY | $106,130 | $78,271 | $72,725 |
| UT | $91,120 | $68,878 | $72,502 |
| CT | $100,690 | $74,874 | $72,210 |
| FL | $91,980 | $73,538 | $71,084 |
| SC | $84,340 | $64,887 | $69,638 |
| MA | $100,640 | $74,918 | $69,216 |
| MI | $83,790 | $64,466 | $68,447 |
| KY | $78,830 | $61,645 | $68,141 |
| RI | $86,910 | $67,132 | $66,197 |
| HI | $97,570 | $71,498 | $65,831 |
| WV | $73,840 | $58,284 | $64,924 |
| PA | $80,610 | $63,064 | $64,681 |
| MS | $67,280 | $53,562 | $61,360 |
| AL | $61,160 | $48,687 | $54,115 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for dental hygienists, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $98,100 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for dental hygienists, 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 Alaska, at $101,960.
- The price adjustment for dental hygienists uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Alabama anchors the bottom at $54,115. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for dental hygienists are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $98,100. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for dental hygienists 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 $101,960, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms figures for dental hygienists deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.