Canada’s oral health workforce: Using long-run trends to inform rising demand for dental services

BACKGROUND: In 2023, Canada launched a publicly funded dental care plan subsidizing coverage to nine million previously uninsured individuals. This sudden expansion of coverage has raised concerns about whether there is sufficient capacity to meet demand for services. OBJECTIVE: To contextualize the current and future capacity of dental services in Canada. METHODS: This study uses a quantitative analysis of longitudinal data (1997-2023) from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey (LFS) to examine trends in employment levels, hours worked, and earnings for occupations in the oral health workforce. RESULTS: While the dentists-to-population ratio remained relatively stable over the past two decades, similar ratios for dental assistants and hygienists increased. Average weekly work hours for assistants and hygienists were relatively steady, whereas dentists' hours declined in the first half of the period. From 1997 to 2023, wages for assistants and hygienists grew roughly in line with inflation, lagging behind both sectoral and national real wage growth over this period. CONCLUSIONS: Canada's relatively low dentist-to-population ratio, geographic maldistribution of dentists, and slower real wage growth-particularly among assistants-may pose challenges to meeting growing labour demand for oral health personnel.