How much does a dental hygienist make? Well there are a variety of factors that you should consider that can dramatically affect the dental hygienist salary and your entire dental hygienist career such as experience. Below we will give you the national dental hygienist salary information and give you a couple great tips on how you can ensure you are earning one of the highest salaries in the nation.
You would think that where you took your dental hygienist school or where you received your dental training would be the deciding factor in income. Yes If you went to an Ivy League dental hygienist school or medical school then that might help. But that’s still not the biggest factor.
So, how much do dental hygienists make in the USA? The U.S. department of labor reports that the annual average salary is approximately$68,250. Please remember that this takes into account all of the highs and the lows as an average and is slanted because there are far more lows than highs. We however will show you how you can easily position yourself to be at that top end of the earnings ladder.
When looking at how to potentially make the highest dental hygienist salary that you can please take a look at a geographical pay raise instead of only an experience based pay increase.
This is to say that there are many states and even cities within them that have wildly varying pay structures. You could literally be in one city and just across the state line in another not 10 miles away you could be making 30% more money. Yes that is oversimplifying it just a tad but it illustrates the point.
At the time of writing the great state of New Hampshire is number one on the list with dental hygienist salaries that we could find advertised coming in at just over $77,000. Now think about this for a moment. If you did the same exact job in the lowest paying states you could be taking a position only offering approximately $54,000 per year. That’s a difference of $23,000 per year. That’s a huge difference! If you look at it in real life terms that difference is not just a small thing that’s a house payment. Or put another way by living in one area verses another your house is basically free.
The other tip we would like to share with you is look towards getting a specialty degree or certificate. These can range anywhere from doing a little extra education while in school, doing extra time of education and even getting dental hygienist product companies to sponsor you to take additional courses offered by their companies so you can be certified in using their product lines.
The possibilities are nearly endless and you can literally write your own ticket in this field. You really have made a great choice going with the field of dental hygienist.
We would like to wish you all the best in your dental training and new dental hygienist career and only the best in all the rest of your life.