If you are looking for dental assistant salary information, you might be interested in a very good job. The good news is over the years, dental assistant salary has been very attractive and is rising with a fast pace due to the need of this profession in the US as well as over the world. However, the bright situation doesn’t guarantee you the best possible salary even if you have good education and certification (which means you graduated from famous dental assistant training schools…). In fact dental assistant depends quite heavily on where you are working (big or small city) and whether you work for government institutions or private clinics.
The current situation of Dental Assistant salary
In the United States, dental assistant salary ranges from $24,000 to $46,000 (per year). This range of salary makes dental assistant a good job with decent payout. Dental assistant work 5 days a week and 8 hours a day, same as typical employees in other fields.
Look at the salary range of a dental assistant, you may wonder why there is a big gap between the top earners and the ones who earn least. There are quite many factors have been producing this big gap as explained below. In the next few years, the lower end of the range and the higher end are expected to rise but so will be the gap.
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What factors affect Dental Assistant Salary?
Dental assistant salary has a wide range and here are the biggest factors which have made the payout in its current shape:
Getting Dental Assistant National Board certification to increase dental assistant salary
This is quite understandable and it doesn’t only work in dental or medical field. In the same environment of working, if you have better dental assistant certification, you will have a higher salary. Currently in the US, the most trustworthy and valuable certification for dental assistant is the Dental Assistant National Board certification (or DANB in short). The DANB certifications consist of Certified Dental Assistant (CDA), Certified Orthodontic Assistant (COA), and Certified Preventive Functions Dental Assistant (CPFDA). The pay rise for a dental assistant after getting the certification can be significant so it is wise for anyone who want a higher salary working as a dental assistant to get these.
Dental assistant salary depends on where you work
Believe it or not, working in a big city with more people who are willing to pay more for health care services will make dental assistant payout higher than in small counties. Recent researches showed that the different in salaries of dental assistant can be very noticeable among states. Cost of living, the demand of human resource in this filed are also the force to make dental assistant salary from this state/area different from others.
Top 10 highest and lowest Dental Assistant salary
Seeing the chart, you can easily find out which states get the highest and lowest payout for dental assistant. However, don’t base on the salary only to choose where to work because the cost of living is different from state to state.
Dental assistant salary is quite attractive for the training and workload. Even in the financial crisis, people just cannot ignore the dental care. As you may know in the recent year, the money paid to dental assistant has been rising and more jobs in this field are created. Working environment of a dental assistant is good and since the salary is reasonable too, going for this career is a wise choice.