205,088 dentists, 60 per 100,000, retiring at 68.7: HPI's 2025 picture of the U.S. dentist workforce

What it says#

HPI's 2025 workforce report, dated August 2025 and built on data available through that month, is a slide deck that pulls together three of the institute's annual updates: the Supply of Dentists tables, the Survey of Dental Practice, and the practice modalities (practice size and DSO) data. The supply tables were later refreshed with 2025 counts, and the page's FAQ carries those: as of 2025 there are 205,088 professionally active dentists in the U.S., 60.0 per 100,000 population, with the ratio varying by state. The tables run from 163,376 dentists in 2001 to 202,400 in 2024 and 205,088 in 2025, rising in every year but 2023; the report says growth has stabilized in recent years because of a temporary retirement surge among older dentists. The dentist-to-population ratio was 57.3 in 2001, peaked at 61.1 in 2017 and was 59.5 in 2024, ranging from 40.2 in Arkansas to 103.2 in the District of Columbia; the rural ratio (32.7) is about half the urban one (64.7), and the gap has widened for more than two decades.

Who is in the workforce: 78.8% of dentists were general practitioners in 2024 (80.0% in 2001), and 21.2% of active dentists in 2025 reported an ADA-recognized specialty. Orthodontics is the most common specialty at about 5% of dentists, and pediatric dentistry has grown 121% since 2001. Women were 16.0% of dentists in 2001 and 39.4% in 2025; about half of dentists 35 and under are female, and women have been the majority of pediatric dentists since 2018. By age in 2025: 17.4% under 35, 26.3% 35 to 44, 22.5% 45 to 54, 18.6% 55 to 64, 15.2% 65 and older. By race and ethnicity in 2024: 67.0% White, 20.4% Asian, 6.1% Hispanic, 3.9% Black, 2.6% other or unknown.

How dentists work: in 2024, 34% of dentists practiced solo, 39% in a single location with at least one other dentist, and 11% in practices with 100 or more locations. Practice ownership was 73% in 2023 against 85% in 2005, and lower for women at every career stage; HPI's reading is that ownership is delayed rather than reduced, with recent graduating classes catching up by their late careers. DSO affiliation rose from 7.2% in 2015 to 16.1% in 2024 (17.6% of female and 14.8% of male dentists), and reached 26.5% of dentists up to 10 years out of school and 31% of those under five years out. In Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida roughly a quarter of dentists are in a DSO.

Economics: general practitioners' average net income, adjusted to 2024 dollars, fell from $267,168 in 2010 to $207,980 in 2024, with a drop across all career stages between 2023 and 2024. Comparing pooled 2015-19 with 2020-24 medians, GP revenue per dentist slipped from $706,966 to $698,436 while expenses per dentist rose from $468,459 to $482,343, and median income went from $230,353 to $200,000. Dentists averaged 35.0 hours a week in the office from 2010 through 2019 and 1.2 hours more after 2020, all of it time not treating patients; owner dentists worked 5.2 more hours a week than employee dentists in 2024.

The future: 75 dental schools as of 2025, 21 of them opened since 2001; 13,742 applicants in 2024, the most since 2007; 6,872 graduates in 2024, up 58% over two decades, with women more than half of every class since 2019. Dentists who retired in 2024 did so at an average age of 68.7, up from 64.7 in 2001, after a career of 41.3 years against 37.8. HPI's projection has dentists per 100,000 rising through 2040 and women reaching half the workforce around then.

Who it applies to#

The data describe professionally active dentists: licensed, not retired, living in the 50 states or DC, whose primary occupation is private practice (full or part time), dental school faculty, the armed forces, other federal service, state or local government, hospital staff, a residency, or another health organization. Counts come from the ADA masterfile, reconciled against state licensure databases and death records; the ownership, income and hours figures come from HPI surveys weighted for nonresponse; the DSO and practice-size figures come from HPI's practice modalities data. Some slides rest on unpublished custom analyses.

For an owner, the numbers describe two pools: the associates you hire and the buyers you will eventually sell to. Both are younger, more female, and more likely to have started in a DSO than the dentists who trained you. For an associate, they describe the market you are pricing yourself in: ownership is still where most dentists end up, later than it used to be.

What changed#

Between the 2024 and 2025 counts in the supply tables, the number of active dentists went from 202,400 to 205,088, the ratio from 59.5 to 60.0 per 100,000, and the female share from 38.5% to 39.4%. The report's own framing of what changed is longer-run: growth stabilized in recent years as baby boomer dentists retired, a surge HPI expects to be largely over by the late 2020s, after which new graduates outnumber exits and the per-capita supply rises again. The page presents the 2025 report as a new deep dive that combines the supply, practice and modality updates in one document; each is still published separately. The deck's own counts (for example 202,485 for 2024) differ slightly from the later data tables (202,400), which reflect a refresh of the masterfile.

Where the source is#

The HPI dentist workforce page hosts the 2025 report as an 80-slide PDF (suggested reference: American Dental Association, The U.S. Dentist Workforce, Health Policy Institute, August 2025), a recorded overview by HPI's Marko Vujicic, and the underlying data files: Supply of Dentists in the U.S.: 2001-2025 (XLSX), selected 2024 results from the Survey of Dental Practice (XLSX) and the 2024 practice size and DSO distribution (XLSX). The page's FAQ carries the 2025 headline counts. All are free; the report is copyright ADA, and some slides rest on unpublished analyses of the ADA masterfile.