Dental office establishments by state and employment size

Our data

We selected 51 state-level rows for offices of dentists, calculated each state's share of 135,665 establishments, and derived local employment-size comparisons. The CSV and JSON expose the same counts, source codes and missing-value status. These are computed public-data aggregates at the industry and state level.

Download the 51-row CSV · JSON dataset · Source checksums · Methodology

Source: Census Bureau 2023 County Business Patterns state bulk file. Industry filter: NAICS 621210; all legal forms; 50 states and District of Columbia. The five leading states sum to 57,480 establishments, or 42.37% of this geographic total.

California leads, but the five-state total is below half

California contributes 22,757 establishments, Texas 11,902, Florida 9,039, New York 8,001 and Illinois 5,781. Together they account for 57,480 of the 135,665 establishments. The other states and DC contain the remaining 78,185. A location-based market review therefore needs more than the leading five states to describe most of this measured footprint.

Assessing access to dental care, patient demand and adequacy of services requires a separate study. Those questions require population, utilization, clinical and geographic evidence beyond this file. This report supplies a business-data baseline for account-planning work.

Four different units should stay separate

An establishment, an individual dentist, an NPI registration and a commercial parent account can describe different things. A single location may relate to several providers or registrations. Several locations may belong to one parent account. Resolving those relationships requires identifiers from business and provider records.

For that reason, comparing its 135,665 establishments with individual dentists or organization NPIs requires a defined crosswalk before estimating a coverage gap. First define the unit in each source, then construct a supported matching method at the record level. The state table can check a geographic distribution after that work, with matching performed against the underlying identified records.

The under-five band covers a minority of dental establishments

The less-than-five-employee band accounts for 37.70% of dental office establishments in this extract. That is lower than the corresponding share in the four other industries studied in this research series. The comparison describes local employment-size distributions under the same source year and geographic filter; revenue and buying-power comparisons require separate evidence.

The three bands below 20 employees together contain 129,008 establishments. California has 22,102 under-20 establishments among 22,757 total, or 97.12%. Texas has 11,424 of 11,902, or 95.98%, and Florida has 8,679 of 9,039, or 96.02%. All required size-band inputs are numeric across the 51 state rows.

Ownership and specialty are unresolved here

The selected NAICS code is 621210, offices of dentists. Dental service organizations, independent ownership, specialties, practice brands and purchasing contacts require additional classification evidence. Employment-size bands describe local staffing groups.

An account program that distinguishes an independent practice from a group location needs current ownership evidence. A program focused on a dental specialty needs an appropriate specialty source and matching process. Those classifications can be added to a separately verified business dataset, with their own source attribution alongside the Census baseline.

A practical comparison for a dental account database

Create a current, deduplicated location view from records your team has verified, while preserving links to source identifiers and parent accounts. Group those locations by state. Compare the shape of that distribution with this historical benchmark and investigate the largest differences without assuming that the Census count is a current target to match exactly.

A difference can come from source year, employer-only coverage, location normalization, parent consolidation or a deliberate specialty filter. Record which explanation is supported and which remains unknown. The downloadable data helps make that investigation repeatable. Use current business-level evidence to assess contact validity, operating status, reachability and service fit.

All state counts and derived shares

The table is ordered by total establishments. Shares use the full 51-jurisdiction denominator. Employment-size columns count establishments within each local size band. Use the horizontal scroll area on a narrow screen; the CSV is available above for filtering and analysis.

Method, missing values and reproducibility

1. Selection. Select the 2023 CBP state bulk file, retain LFO '-' (all legal forms), the exact industry code and the 50 states plus District of Columbia. Do not add legal-form subgroups or industry children to their totals. Join state labels using Census FIPS codes preserved as two-character strings.
2. Share calculation. Sum EST across the 51 rows. Divide each row's EST by that sum and multiply by 100 for geographic share. Sort by EST descending, then FIPS ascending to give ties a stable display order.
3. Employment-size rule. For the under-20 count, add N<5, N5_9 and N10_19 only when all three are numeric. Otherwise retain a null result and the source N marker. Divide a known under-20 count by the same row's EST for its percentage. Round displayed percentages to two decimals; retain integer counts for reconciliation.

The Census state record layout for 2020–2023 defines the fields and the N marker for unavailable or non-comparable size-class counts. We preserve those markers rather than replacing them with zero. The official state FIPS reference supplies the geography labels.

The observation year is 2023; the report was prepared in 2026. The unit is an employer establishment in the chosen industry, not a unique company or contact. Nonemployer businesses are outside this extract's population. Employment-size categories describe local establishments rather than corporate parents. Geographic shares use only the 50 states and DC, excluding territories. A blank derived size value means unavailable, not zero. These descriptive aggregates do not establish current operating status, parent ownership, buying authority, revenue, purchasing intent or contact-list completeness. The data cannot assess clinical access, patient demand or adequacy of care. It does not identify dentists, NPIs, dental groups, specialties or practice brands, and cannot match those populations to establishments.

The source archive and its extracted text have recorded SHA256 hashes. A retained subset contains the 255 source rows used across this five-industry series, including the original size-band values. The included calculation script can reproduce every exported row from that subset. CSV blanks correspond to JSON nulls; rounding can leave shares above or below exactly 100%.

The Census methodology page currently warns that its guidance is being updated. This report remains tied to the archived 2023 file and its published record layout, and leaves future release procedures for review against their own documentation. The industry-code reference identifies the 2017 NAICS classification used for this vintage.

This analysis and its prose were prepared with AI assistance. Verum is responsible for the report. Recheck the calculations when a source correction or new data vintage is adopted, and preserve the 2023 baseline as a dated version. The preparation date records this analysis; the business counts retain their original source year.

Related research and account-data methods

• Accounting service establishments by state and size
• Engineering service establishments across the states

For the next step, see market-sizing data work and how to define data-quality measures. Match the unit, industry scope and observation date before interpreting any ratio between your records and these aggregates.