Also reporting big gains were Alaska, who received a $4.21 per hour raise and Oklahoma, who got a nice $3.06 increase. However, Oklahoma now at $31.20 per hour is still less than the overall national average of $34.09.
Others achieving significant gains were:
South Carolina ($2.31)
New York ($1.83)
Hawaii ($1.56)
District of Columbia ($1.42)
Delaware ($1.34)
Rhode Island ($1.22)
Arkansas ($1.13)
Utah ($1.05)
Losers
That brings us to the losers – I’m referring to state’s wages, of course, not the hygienists living there.
As was mentioned, some of the gains were extraordinarily large, thankfully those state’s that actually saw a reduction in pay for hygienists didn’t do so quite as dramatically.
The worst was the state of Washington, which saw it’s hourly average drop by $1.20 per hour. Washington was previously ranked the third-highest paying state, but with the drop has fallen two spots to fifth highest at $42.73 per hour (still well above the national average).
Maine (-$1.12) and Louisiana (-$0.94) saw the next biggest drops and both states (particularly Louisiana) were already well below the national average so that’s not the best news for hygienists living there.
your statistics are either fabrication or the results of interviewing only employers. As a working dental hygienist and a member of an organization representing 15,000 hygienist nationwide, I can assure you this is far from the truth. In addition, the profession of dental hygiene has experienced an overwhelming saturation of new graduates who are spending 12-18 months attempting to find full time employment with no success. Only Dentist employers have benefited by this recent glut of RDHs. They can offer lower wages and no benefits, undercutting applicants.