Dental Receptionist Salary by State: What BLS Actually Publishes (2026)

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have an occupation called "dental receptionist", and no official per-state wage for one exists. What BLS does publish, and what this page uses, is two things: per-state wages for Receptionists and Information Clerks (SOC 43-4171) across all industries, and a national wage for that same occupation inside NAICS 621200, Offices of Dentists. The second of those is the number almost nobody quotes and the most useful one here: the annual median for a receptionist working in a dental office is $46,500, against $38,010 for receptionists economy-wide. A dental front desk pays about 22% above the receptionist median.

What does BLS actually publish for dental receptionists?

Nothing, under that name. The 2018 Standard Occupational Classification contains the word "receptionist" in exactly one occupation, 43-4171 Receptionists and Information Clerks, whose illustrative examples are "Appointment Clerk, Front Desk Receptionist, Land Leasing Information Clerk". The word "dental" does not appear in that definition at all. The closest BLS comes is under 43-6013 Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, whose illustrative examples include "Dental Secretary" (BLS, 2018 SOC definitions).

That matters because every per-state "dental receptionist salary" table in circulation, including the one that used to be on this page, is somebody's derivation rather than a BLS series. Three things are published, and between them they answer the question better than a derived table does:

The Technical Notes are explicit about the geography: the OEWS data "include cross-industry occupational employment and wage estimates for the nation; states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands; and approximately 530 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and nonmetropolitan areas", while industry detail is published for "NAICS sector, 3-digit, most 4-digit, and selected 5- and 6-digit industry levels" at the national level (BLS OEWS Technical Notes, May 2025).

How much more does a dental office pay than the receptionist average?

About 22% at the median. BLS publishes national industry-specific estimates for "NAICS 621200 - Offices of Dentists", and the receptionist row in that industry sits well above the economy-wide receptionist row at every percentile, not just the middle.

The bottom of the dental range is the striking part. A receptionist at the 10th percentile economy-wide earns $28,760; inside a dental office the 10th percentile is $36,000. Dental practices do not appear to hire at the bottom of this labour market, which is consistent with what the role actually involves: insurance benefit detail, treatment scheduling across providers, and clinical vocabulary.

The senior version of the role is higher again. Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants (43-6013) in Offices of Dentists have an annual median of $47,990 and a mean of $49,780, on employment of 120,490. Add the two occupations together and BLS counts 190,420 front-desk and administrative staff in US dental offices. If you are budgeting a dental front desk rather than a general reception desk, those are the two rows to price against.

What do receptionists earn in each state?

Below is the complete May 2025 OEWS state table for 43-4171 Receptionists and Information Clerks, all industries, sorted by annual median. This is a cross-industry figure: it is the labour market a dental practice hires from, not a dental-specific wage. Read it as the floor your local market sets, then apply the dental premium above it.

Which states pay the most and the least?

The District of Columbia leads at a $49,060 annual median, followed by Alaska ($44,720), Washington ($44,710), California ($44,100) and Massachusetts ($43,870). Mississippi is lowest at $31,160, with West Virginia ($31,920), Alabama ($32,590), Louisiana ($32,750) and Kentucky ($32,940) just above it.

The full spread across the 50 states and DC is 1.57x, which is a good deal narrower than the gap you will see quoted on pages that build their own state estimates. It is also not a purchasing-power statement: a $49,060 median in DC and a $31,160 median in Mississippi buy very different amounts of housing, and BLS does not adjust for that.

Two states are worth reading twice. Wisconsin ($41,150) and North Dakota ($39,530) sit above much larger, higher-cost states, and Pennsylvania pays a $36,810 median with a 10th percentile of $24,820 - one of the widest bottom-to-middle gaps in the table, which usually signals a market split between metro and rural employers.

What does a front desk cost beyond the salary?

Wages are roughly seven-tenths of what an employee costs, and this too is measured rather than assumed. BLS reports that for private industry workers in March 2026, "Wages and salaries averaged $32.60 per hour worked and accounted for 69.9 percent of employer costs, while benefit costs averaged $14.01 per hour worked and accounted for the remaining 30.1 percent" (BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026).

One component of that load is fixed by statute rather than by your benefits policy. The IRS states that "the current tax rate for Social Security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee" and "the current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the employer and 1.45% for the employee" (IRS Topic No. 751). The employer half is 7.65%, which on a $46,500 wage is $3,557 before any benefit you choose to offer.

What is not published, and why that matters

There is no BLS wage for a dental receptionist in your state. OEWS publishes occupation by state, and occupation by industry nationally, but not occupation by industry by state. The BLS FAQ says so directly: "Industry data is generally only available at the national level." Every state file row carries NAICS 000000, "Cross-industry". There is no industry dimension in the state data at all.

So when a page shows you "dental receptionist salary in Ohio" to the dollar, one of three things has happened: it has taken the cross-industry receptionist figure for Ohio and relabelled it, it has applied a national dental premium to a state figure without saying so, or it has made the number up. The first two are defensible if disclosed. The third is what this page used to do.

The honest construction, if you want a dental-specific state estimate, is to take your state's median from the table above and multiply by the national dental premium of about 1.22. For Ohio that is $35,920 x 1.22 = roughly $43,800. Call it an estimate, because it is one: it assumes the dental premium is uniform across states, and nothing published tells you whether it is.

How should a practice use these numbers?