# Hourly vs. salary for Florida dental hygienists
Most hygiene posts quote pay by the hour, and plenty of temp posts quote it by the day. The dataset this site uses holds the annual figures from the federal series everyone cites for the occupation: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. This page shows how to move between the two numbers, and where that conversion stops being honest.
The 2,080-hour rule
OEWS turns hourly wages into annual wages by multiplying by 2,080, which is 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. The conversion runs both directions, so dividing a published annual median by 2,080 returns an implied hourly rate. The word implied carries weight here. The hourly figures below are our arithmetic on the published annual medians, not the hourly series the Bureau also publishes, which our dataset does not carry, and every one of them assumes exactly 2,080 paid hours a year.
The conversion, metro by metro
| Metro | Median annual wage, May 2025 | Implied hourly, median ÷ 2,080 |
|---|---|---|
| Naples-Marco Island | $100,140 | $48.14 |
| North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota | $95,930 | $46.12 |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | $95,870 | $46.09 |
| Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville | $95,400 | $45.87 |
| Jacksonville | $94,960 | $45.65 |
| Punta Gorda | $94,740 | $45.55 |
| Sebastian-Vero Beach-West Vero Corridor | $94,490 | $45.43 |
| Port St. Lucie | $94,060 | $45.22 |
| Lakeland-Winter Haven | $93,080 | $44.75 |
| Wildwood-The Villages | $92,900 | $44.66 |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford | $92,560 | $44.50 |
| Cape Coral-Fort Myers | $91,120 | $43.81 |
| Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin | $88,030 | $42.32 |
| Panama City-Panama City Beach | $87,360 | $42.00 |
| Gainesville | $84,750 | $40.75 |
| Ocala | $83,260 | $40.03 |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | $82,780 | $39.80 |
| Homosassa Springs | $81,810 | $39.33 |
| Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent | $81,780 | $39.32 |
| Sebring | $80,590 | $38.75 |
| Tallahassee | $79,520 | $38.23 |
| Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach | $79,050 | $38.00 |
Annual column: BLS OEWS May 2025 estimates, as published for each metro area. Hourly column: the annual median divided by 2,080, rounded to the cent, computed by us.
Where the conversion breaks
The divisor assumes a full paid year. A hygienist working three 8-hour days a week is paid for about 1,248 hours a year, 60 percent of what the divisor assumes, so the same hourly rate lands far below the annual figure the metro median implies. Summer gaps, a leave of absence, a slow season at a seasonal office, a month between offices: every one of them shrinks paid hours without touching the hourly rate, and the annual comparison loses its meaning in the other direction when someone covers extra days.
Day rates hide a second problem. A day rate needs hours per day before it becomes comparable to anything, and the number of patients squeezed into that day changes what the rate really pays per hour of chair time. A $500 day over 10 patients is a different job from a $500 day over 6, even at identical hours.
Production pay breaks the frame entirely. When pay is a share of production, there is no fixed hourly rate to convert, because the wage varies with output, and a survey wage measure and a production share are different instruments measuring different things. None of this says one structure is better. It says the conversion table only compares numbers of the same kind.
A worked example with round numbers
Two invented offers, both built to be comparable. Office A quotes $46 an hour for three 8-hour days a week: 46 dollars times 24 hours times 52 weeks equals $57,408 a year. Office B quotes $74,000 a year for four 8-hour days a week: 74,000 divided by 1,664 paid hours equals $44.47 an hour. Office B pays $16,592 more per year at a lower hourly rate, because it buys 8 more hours a week. Neither quote is wrong. They are answers to different questions, and the question a hygienist should ask first is how many paid hours a week each quote actually assumes.
Day rates convert with the same arithmetic and the same trap. A $500 day across 8 scheduled hours is $62.50 an hour. The same $500 across a 10-hour day is $50 an hour, and across a short day that runs long on paperwork it can fall further still. The rate per day says nothing until the hours inside the day are on the table, and patient load decides how hard those hours run.
The mean casts an hourly shadow too, and in some metros it is wide. Miami's May 2025 mean of $87,190 divides out to $41.92 an hour against a median that divides out to $39.80. The $2.12 between them is the same tail effect visible in the annual numbers, expressed per hour. In metros where the mean sits below the median the shadow runs the other way, which is one more reason the median makes the cleaner reference point for a single offer.
Which number to compare to what
Implied hourly rates work for comparing two offers with the same promised hours. Annualized totals work when the hours differ, which is most of the time. The BLS metro medians work as a reference point, but only in annual form and only with three caveats attached: the median covers all employers in the metro, not one office; the reference period is May 2025; and the series measures wages alone, with no benefits, no production bonuses and no schedule inside it.
Costs sit outside the wage the same way hours do. License renewal, continuing education and any equipment a hygienist supplies personally do not appear in an OEWS figure or in an hourly quote, so two identical hourly rates at two offices are not identical take-home situations. The conversion table compares wages. It has nothing to say about everything that is not a wage.
Questions that make any quote comparable
How many paid hours per week does the rate assume, and are they guaranteed? How many patients per day fill those hours? What happens to the day rate when a day gets cancelled with short notice? Is any share of pay tied to production, and how is that production measured? An office that answers those four questions in writing has made its number comparable to any other, whatever unit it quotes in.
One more comparison sits across metro lines. A hygienist who lives near a boundary and holds two offers from adjacent metros is comparing against two different medians at once, and those medians are not neighbors. Punta Gorda's May 2025 median is $94,740 while North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota reports $95,930 and Miami reports $82,780. Convert both offers to the same unit first, then read each one against its own metro row, never against a statewide figure the dataset does not even contain.
The annual side of this comparison, including the medians behind every implied rate above, sits on the Florida hygienist salary hub, where each of the 22 metros carries its own page.