Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons

At $352,220 — $302,200 a year clear of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons sits at the top of what BLS publishes. Read the gate before the figure: at this level there is always one, and it is usually measured in years.

With 4,910 employed nationally, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.

This work suits people prepared to spend years qualifying for a scope of practice they then hold for the rest of a career, with the accountability that comes attached to it.

No verified preparation time is on file for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.

A quarter earn under $204,610, a quarter over $428,710: $18,675 a month between them at a 2.1x ratio. Planning around the midpoint of a spread this wide is planning around a number very few people in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons actually earn.

The 25th percentile is $204,610, $154,590 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.

Avoid it if you could not carry clinical responsibility for an outcome that goes badly through nobody’s fault.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 4,910 people employed as Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

At 2.1x the range from $204,610 to $428,710 is doing more explaining than the job title is. Something sorts people across that distance — sector, speciality, or who employs them — and finding out what it is matters more than the $352,220 midpoint.

The middle half of this field earns between $204,610 and $428,710. That is $224,100 of range, with $352,220 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

The 75th percentile is $428,710. Reaching it from the $352,220 midpoint is $76,490 a year; reaching it from the $204,610 that the bottom quarter of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons earn is $224,100.

The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $147,610 above the $204,610 bottom quarter but only $76,490 below the $428,710 top quarter. Most of the distance in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $98.37 at the bottom quarter, $169.33 at the midpoint, $206.11 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.