The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission reported that entry-level dental assistants earned $20,690 a year on average in 2013. The average dental assistant salary in Oklahoma was $31,060 a year, while experienced professionals in the top ten percent earned $41,280 on average.
The average Oklahoma dental assistant salary varied greatly throughout the state. The Workforce Investment Areas (WIA) with the highest average and top-earning dental assistant salaries were the Southwest and Tulsa WIAs:
Oklahoma Dental Assistant Job Growth in Workforce Investment Areas
The field of dental assisting in Oklahoma is rapidly growing. The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission projects an increase of 20.61% in the number of dental assistant jobs that will become available in the period between 2012 and 2022.
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Jobs are predicted to increase at particularly high levels in the Southern and Eastern Workforce Investment Areas. Growth is expected to be more than 26% in these two areas.
Seven hundred of the 1,621 dental assistant jobs expected to become available in Oklahoma will be in the Eastern Workforce Investment Area. This is more than twice as many as the next fastest growing area for dental assistants, which is the Tulsa area where 340 jobs are expected to become available.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics offers an analysis of Oklahoma’s dental assisting salary percentiles in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas of the state (2013):