I've read that dentists make drastically less in Hawaii than they do stateside. Is there is any truth to this? I looked over the BLS and it seems that they make around the same money stateside dentists do. Obviously, that money won't go as far due to the high cost of living but that doesn't particularly matter to me; I don't plan to live as if I'm rich anyways. I don't plan to specialize and as such, should I be worried about a very high amount of competition for work there? Would working on an island besides Oahu increase my salary / lessen the competition or would it have the reverse effect?
Dentistry in Hawaii
- Thread starter johblip
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there are about a trillion dentists practicing in hawaii...i saw it first hand
Yea, I heard this as was the case on Oahu but I didn't really hear much / anything at all about the other islands. What makes me extremely confused is that despite the high amount of competition, the BLS still pumped out an average of 144k. I'm not exactly sure what to make of it.
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BLS figures are misleading since it only calculates salaried dentists. These are the dentists working in academia or community clinics.
The majority of dentists work in private practice and are self-employed. BLS does not include the income from these dentists. So it's a pretty much a useless site to estimate your income, unless you're planning on working for the government.
I've visited Honolulu a few years ago, and if you go out of the main city, it goes from a tropical paradise with fancy hotels to a barren wasteland. I'm sure if you want to work in Hawaii bad enough, you'll find something. Might have to go work in a barren wasteland though.
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I know the BLS doesn't include the private practice owners, I was using it to show that despite being a very congested location, the average income for associates / gov / w/e is still pretty damn high and not representative of what I've read elsewhere (i.e. dentists take a large pay hit on the islands.)
Considering how tiny Hawaii is I don't think that work in a less than desirable location would really impact much if you know what I mean.
