Picture a practice owner in Charlotte and another in Boston. Both would tell you they’re in a staffing crisis, and the stories behind it could not look more different. The Charlotte owner posts a hygienist opening and waits eight weeks without a single qualified applicant. The Boston owner interviews three good candidates within days, then loses all three to signing bonuses at practices a few miles away.
Both are real staffing crises. They are not the same crisis, and the fix that works for one will barely dent the other.
Nationally, the numbers back up how widespread this has gotten. In the 2025 Dental Economics-Levin Group Annual Practice Survey, 89% of responding dentists said there’s a shortage of dental staff available to hire, and 76% had at least one open position at the time they were surveyed, a sharp jump from the year before. That’s the backdrop. But “dental staffing shortage” is really two different problems wearing the same headline, and which one you’re fighting depends almost entirely on your zip code.
The South’s version: not enough hands, period
In much of the South, the shortage starts upstream of hiring. There simply aren’t enough dental providers in the area to begin with. Federal shortage-area data from the Health Resources and Services Administration, current as of Q1 2026, shows the gap in concrete terms. Florida carries 283 dental shortage-area designations and has only met 18.7% of the need in those areas. Closing that gap would take an estimated 1,271 additional dental practitioners in Florida alone. Kentucky’s 226 designations are only 10.4% met. North Carolina sits at 209 designations and 23% met, needing roughly 657 more providers. Georgia’s 186 designations are 17.8% met, with about 402 providers needed to close the gap. Florida, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and Louisiana all land in the ten states with the most people living in dental shortage areas nationwide.
Closing that gap would take an estimated 1,271 additional dental practitioners in Florida alone.
That’s a supply problem before it’s ever a hiring problem. You can write the best job posting in the industry and it won’t summon hygienists who don’t live within a reasonable commute.
There’s a wrinkle to this, though. In the 2023 Dental Economics Fee and Staffing Survey, Southern respondents reported the least difficulty filling dental hygiene and assisting positions of any region. What hurt them more was the cost of keeping those roles filled: Southern respondents were more likely than respondents elsewhere to say increased staffing costs were hurting their practice. So the Southern version of this crisis isn’t always “no one applies.” Sometimes it’s “we can fill the seat, but every raise it takes to keep someone eats into a margin that was already thin.”
The Northeast’s version: plenty of dentists, not enough staff
The Northeast tells almost the opposite story on paper. Massachusetts has 56 shortage-area designations but has already met 62.1% of that need, leaving a gap of about 20 practitioners. Vermont has met 77.6% of its need and needs zero additional providers by that measure. Connecticut, at 32.8% met, still needs around 98 more providers, but that’s a fraction of what Florida or Kentucky are short. By raw dentist access, the Northeast is in far better shape than the South.
And yet, in that same 2023 Dental Economics survey, Northeast respondents expressed the most frustration with staffing of any region, and filling hygiene and assisting positions was still very challenging for respondents nationwide. The region has enough dentists. It doesn’t have enough people willing to take an open hygiene chair for what a practice down the street was paying last year. Three other offices are trying to hire the same short list of candidates.
The region has enough dentists. It doesn’t have enough people willing to take an open hygiene chair for what a practice down the street was paying last year.
That’s a demand problem, not a supply problem. The providers exist. The competition for a small, high-cost labor pool is what’s actually driving the vacancy.
What the two crises have in common
However different the cause, a Southern practice with an unfilled hygiene chair and a Northeast practice losing candidates to a bidding war end up in the same place: fewer productive hours, patients waiting longer, and a schedule that can’t run at full capacity. Neither problem gets solved by posting the job one more time and hoping the local pool changes shape on its own.
What both actually need is a way to reach past whatever is limiting their local labor market, whether that market is thin because there aren’t enough people in it, or thin because everyone in it already has three job offers. That’s a reach problem more than a recruiting problem, and it’s the same reach problem whether you’re in Tampa or Providence.
This is where a staffing marketplace changes the math instead of just adding another job board to the pile. GoTu connects offices and DSOs to a pool of more than 200,000 vetted, credentialed dental professionals, which means a Southern practice isn’t limited to whoever happens to live in that county, and a Northeast practice isn’t stuck in a wage war with the office next door just to keep a chair covered. For a multi-location DSO operating across both regions, that also means one system for two very different staffing problems, instead of building a separate workaround for each state.
A plan that starts with knowing which crisis you’re actually in
However different the cause, a Southern practice with an unfilled hygiene chair and a Northeast practice losing candidates to a bidding war end up in the same place: fewer productive hours, patients waiting longer, and a schedule that can’t run at fulla capacity. Neither problem gets solved by posting the job one more time and hoping the local pool changes shape on its own.
What both actually need is a way to reach past whatever is limiting their local labor market, whether that market is thin because there aren’t enough people in it, or thin because everyone in it already has three job offers. That’s a reach problem more than a recruiting problem, and it’s the same reach problem whether you’re in Tampa or Providence.
This is where a staffing marketplace changes the math instead of just adding another job board to the pile. GoTu connects offices and DSOs to a pool of more than 200,000 vetted, credentialed dental professionals, which means a Southern practice isn’t limited to whoever happens to live in that county, and a Northeast practice isn’t stuck in a wage war with the office next door just to keep a chair covered. For a multi-location DSO operating across both regions, that also means one system for two very different staffing problems, instead of building a separate workaround for each state.
Same headline, different fix
“Dental staffing shortage” makes for a clean national headline, but it’s not one problem, and it doesn’t have one fix. What’s actually happening in Tampa is not what’s happening in Providence, even if both owners describe it the same way when someone asks. Knowing which version you’re fighting is the first step to actually closing the gap instead of running the same playbook twice and wondering why it only worked once.
If staffing gaps, wherever they’re coming from, are standing between your schedule and your bottom line, that’s solvable without waiting months for the local labor market to change on its own.
See how GoTu’s dental staffing marketplace can help you reach beyond your immediate area and keep every chair covered: gotu.com/dental-offices/.
References
- Becker’s Dental Review, “Dental care provider gaps, by state,” citing HRSA Q1 2026 shortage-area data (published January 15, 2026): https://www.beckersdental.com/benchmarking/dental-care-provider-gaps-by-state/
- AMN Healthcare, “The States Most in Need of Dentists”: https://www.amnhealthcare.com/blog/dentist/the-states-most-in-need-of-dentists/
- DentistryIQ, “Dental practice staffing shortage: Where practices are struggling the most,” reporting on the 2023 Dental Economics Fee and Staffing Survey (published September 19, 2023): https://www.dentistryiq.com/practice-management/staffing/article/14299082/dental-practice-staffing-shortage-where-practices-are-struggling-the-most
- Dental Economics, “Findings from the 2025 Dental Economics-Levin Group Annual Practice Survey”: https://www.dentaleconomics.com/practice/article/55368689/findings-from-the-2025-dental-economics-levin-group-annual-practice-survey
- GoTu, dental staffing marketplace for offices and DSOs: https://gotu.com/dental-offices/
- The regional Northeast-versus-South hiring-difficulty comparison comes from the 2023 Dental Economics Fee and Staffing Survey (source 3), the most recent version of that specific survey to publish a regional breakdown; the 2025 Dental Economics-Levin Group survey (source 4) updates the national shortage figures but does not break results out by region. The shortage-area and practitioner-need figures (sources 1 and 2) reflect HRSA data current as of Q1 2026.
