United States
NAICS 621210 Data Guide
The panels above show the sourced 621210 definition and cited national figures for the industry it defines. This page is the working guide to datasets keyed by the code: which public sources publish 621210 data, the unit-of-analysis traps between them, and the vintage discipline that keeps a cross-dataset comparison honest.
NAICS 621210 — Offices of Dentists
Establishments of health practitioners having the degree of D.M.D. (Doctor of Dental Medicine), D.D.S. (Doctor of Dental Surgery), or D.D.Sc. (Doctor of Dental Science) primarily engaged in the independent practice of general or specialized dentistry or dental surgery. These practitioners operate private or group practices in their own offices (e.g., centers, clinics) or in the facilities of others, such as hospitals or HMO medical centers. They can provide either comprehensive preventive, cosmetic, or emergency care, or specialize in a single field of dentistry.
Where related activity is classified instead
- 621399 Offices of All Other Miscellaneous Health Practitioners — independent practice of dental hygiene with no dentist practicing within the entity.
- 621498 All Other Outpatient Care Centers — clinics whose practitioners hold degrees from more than one industry (e.g., an M.D. and a D.M.D. in the same establishment).
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2022 Manual, 2022. Source. A classification key for organizing data — not a clinical credential.
Dental industry data — United States
136,140
U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2022 (establishments, nation). Retrieved 2026-07-22. Source
334,914,895
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2023 (population, nation). Retrieved 2026-07-20. Source
40.6
Derived from U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2022 (establishments, nation). Retrieved 2026-07-22. and ACS population. Establishments, not dentists.
$191,750
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, 2023 (annual wage, nation). Retrieved 2026-07-20. Source
1,031,957
U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2022 (employees, nation). Retrieved 2026-07-22. Source
Every figure counts establishments (business locations) or wage-and-salary workers — not individual dentists, and not licenses. Suppressed values reflect real source disclosure limits, never zero. See our methodology.
One code, several instruments
A classification code is not a dataset; it is an index key that several datasets share. The figures in the panel above come from the sources this site ingests, but the federal statistical system publishes 621210-keyed data through multiple programs, each built for a different purpose with different coverage. Treating them as interchangeable 'dental industry data' is the root error this page exists to prevent.
| Dataset family | Publisher | Unit of analysis | Built to answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| County Business Patterns | Census Bureau | Establishments, employment, payroll (employer businesses) | How many dental-office locations exist where, with what payroll |
| Economic Census | Census Bureau | Establishments, receipts, detailed industry statistics (every five years) | Industry structure and revenue in benchmark years |
| Nonemployer Statistics | Census Bureau | Businesses without paid employees | Solo operations that CBP's employer universe excludes |
| Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages | Bureau of Labor Statistics | Establishments and employment covered by unemployment insurance | Employment and wage trends at higher frequency |
| Statistics of U.S. Businesses | Census Bureau | Firms and establishments by enterprise size | How consolidated the industry's ownership is |
County Business Patterns covers employer establishments — businesses with paid employees. A solo practitioner with no staff falls outside that universe and into Nonemployer Statistics. Any claim about 'all dental businesses' built from one side of that seam undercounts, and stitching the two sides together requires care, because their units, methods, and vintages differ.
Industry data is not occupation data
The single most common trap in 621210 research is sliding between the industry and the occupation. NAICS 621210 defines an industry: dental offices, and its employment figures count everyone those establishments employ — dentists, hygienists, assistants, front-desk staff, billers. Dentists as people are an occupation, classified under a different system (SOC codes) and measured by different instruments, which count dentists wherever they work — including settings outside 621210 — while typically excluding many self-employed owners. The panel above may show both establishment-based and occupation-based figures; their units are labeled precisely because the two systems answer different questions and their numbers should never be arithmetic partners without explicit method.
Before dividing any two 621210-adjacent numbers, say out loud what the quotient would mean. 'Industry employment per establishment' is meaningful (average office staff size, within CBP's universe). 'Occupation employment divided by industry establishments' is a chimera — different universes, different exclusions, no interpretable result.
Vintage discipline, twice over
Every classified dataset carries two dates that are routinely confused. The reference period is what the data describes — the year the establishments were counted or the wages measured. The classification vintage is which manual's definitions did the sorting. Both matter. Reference periods differ across programs and publish with different lags, so 'current' figures from two sources may describe different years. Classification vintages change on the revision cycle, so a long time series may quietly switch manuals partway through — and a boundary adjustment in a revision can register as a jump in the series that has nothing to do with the industry.
Before comparing two 621210 figures, confirm
- Same unit of analysis (establishments vs. firms vs. employment vs. receipts)
- Same universe (employer vs. nonemployer; UI-covered vs. all)
- Same geography, defined at the same level (county vs. metro vs. state)
- Reference periods you are willing to treat as comparable — stated, not assumed
- Same classification manual vintage, or a documented reason the difference is immaterial
This is also why the citations under the panel's figures state vintage, unit, and geography level on every value. The format is not decoration; it is the minimum information needed to use a number without misusing it, kept attached so it survives being quoted.
Reading suppressed and missing values
Disclosure rules protect individual businesses from being identifiable in published statistics, and they bind hardest exactly where researchers want the most detail: small counties, fine industry-by-size cells, sparse geographies. For a code like 621210 this is a routine condition, not an anomaly — plenty of counties have few enough dental offices that their values are withheld. A suppressed value tells you something real (the cell was small enough to trigger the rule) while telling you nothing numeric. The honest treatments are to report the suppression, aggregate to a coarser geography where publication resumes, or exclude the geography with a note. The dishonest treatment — filling with zero or an interpolated guess — manufactures data where the source declined to publish it, and this site's data layer is built so that cannot happen here.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between CBP establishment counts and Economic Census figures for 621210?
Different programs with different jobs. County Business Patterns publishes annual establishment, employment, and payroll counts for employer businesses; the Economic Census runs every five years with deeper detail, including receipts. Their universes and methods differ enough that figures shouldn't be mixed in one series without reading both programs' documentation. For year-over-year location counts, CBP is the workhorse; for benchmark-year industry structure and revenue, the Economic Census is authoritative.
Why is employment in 621210 industry data so much larger than the number of dentists?
Because industry employment counts everyone dental offices employ — hygienists, assistants, front-desk, billing, and management staff as well as dentists. Dentists as an occupation are measured separately under SOC codes. The ratio between industry employment and dentist headcounts is mostly a statement about staffing structure, not a discrepancy. Treating industry employment as 'number of dentists' inflates the workforce severalfold.
Are self-employed solo dentists in this data?
Often not, and it depends on the dataset. County Business Patterns covers employer establishments, so a true solo operation with no paid employees falls outside it — those appear in the Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics instead. Occupation-based wage surveys likewise generally exclude self-employed owners. Any analysis claiming to cover the whole profession needs to say which side of the employer/nonemployer seam its sources sit on.
Can I build a time series of dental offices from 621210 data?
Yes, with two disciplines. Hold the source and unit constant — a CBP establishment series, not a splice of CBP, Economic Census, and commercial counts — and check the classification vintage across the span, since a manual revision mid-series can shift boundaries and register as spurious change. Documented breaks with a note beat a smooth series built by quiet splicing.
Why does the national panel on this page show some values as unavailable?
Because the underlying source didn't publish them at that combination of measure and geography, or withheld them under disclosure rules. This site renders those states explicitly with the citation attached rather than substituting zeros or estimates — the same discipline described on the methodology page. At national level suppression is rarer than for small counties, but 'not published for this measure' remains a real state the panel reports honestly.
Related on NAICS 621210
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