In a recent article, Insider Monkey created a list of cities with the highest demand for dental hygienists, but unfortunately, the methodology used to come up with that list is completely illogical. The following excerpt from the article explains what they did.
“…we sought to determine the 11 cities with the highest demand for dental hygienists. To do this, we obtained data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine the cities which boast the highest salaries for dental hygienists as greater demand results in higher salaries. Furthermore, we once again consulted the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine the cities which have the highest number of jobs for dental hygienists as it stands to reason that greater demand will result in more jobs. We used these two criteria to create accurate rankings.”
You cannot just throw out the raw number of jobs that currently exist in a particular city in isolation without bringing up any population numbers. You also cannot just throw out the average salary of a particular city without bringing up cost of living or any salary trends. For example, if the average salary is still relatively high but trending down it might be an indication that the market is actually saturated.
Hypothetical example
City A has 2000 jobs with an average wage of $35 per hour, but has 2,500 hygienists in the area. City B “only” has 500 jobs with an average wage of $30 per hour, but has 400 hygienists in the area. Obviously, City B has the most favorable market for hygienists even though it has fewer actual jobs and the average wage is lower.
If Insider Monkey wants to accurately measure the demand for hygienists in any particular city they would have to measure the actual demand for hygienists in that city and the actual supply of hygienists in that city (or within a certain radius). The equation is very simple, but obtaining the necessary information to plug into that equation is very difficult (if not impossible with any certainty) and that’s why you get simplistic articles like the one from Insider Monkey that claim to provide the answer, but in the end tell you nothing of value.
Mark Frias, RDH