Nearly two thirds of dentist and specialist recruitment adverts failed to include a numerical remuneration figure, a new analysis has found.
Just 34.6% of dentist and specialist adverts contained explicit information about remuneration in a sample analysis by Dental Group Signal in August 2026, according to the organisation’s report, Competing for Clinicians.
Anthony Gedge, founder of Dental Group Signal, said groups should consider whether a clinician can understand their prospective earnings, support and development opportunities from the advert, and whether those promises are delivered after they join.
‘My advice to dental groups is to be more specific in your adverts and tell the market and the candidate what the potential earnings are. Americans do this more than in the UK market because everything is 15 years ahead of us,’ he said.
The report showed dental nursing adverts are the most likely to include a specific salary as nurses are the most likely to choose a job based on earnings as the lowest paid role in the sector.
Which region had the most dentist job adverts?
In a separate regional analysis, the south west recorded 218 of the 1,008 dentist advert families examined. This was followed by Yorkshire and the Humber with 154 and the south east with 123.
Gedge said: ‘The south west stands out in the advertising we examined. That gives dental groups a reason to look more closely at their local offer.’
However, Dental Group Signal said its regional charts were based on a retained Great Britain sample rather than a complete market census. Coverage was uneven and heavily weighted towards larger dental groups, while Northern Ireland was not included. The figures therefore do not establish which region had the highest vacancy rate, greatest recruitment difficulty or greatest clinical need.
Advert activity should not be treated as a direct measure of workforce supply. As Dentistry has previously reported, the number of registered dentists can increase while NHS dental provision continues to contract, as national headcounts do not show where or how clinicians work.
The report recommended combining public advertising evidence with internal vacancy, application, start and retention records before drawing conclusions about recruitment performance.
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