Health and care
What does a Dental Hygienist do?
Looking after people directly, often when they are at their worst.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- People all day.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- The same shape each day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $98,100 a year, median
- Dental Hygienists, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Associate's degree
- A year or two, often while earning something.
- Jobs
- +8% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing
What is good about it
- It pays well against the rest of the work on this site.
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Repetition
- Nervous patients
- Neck and back strain
Good pay for the training length, but the work is much the same every day.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Notes and scheduling are automating. Being in the room with a frightened person is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Sit in on a hygienist’s list for a morning and watch the same procedure repeat.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.