20-Year Prospect
Dead rodents smell better than the mouths of some of your patients...not that you care, because dental assistants are going to be around for years to come. Job security cancels out the horrors of halitosis any day.
Over time, Americans have come to understand the importance of getting their teeth cleaned regularly. Preventative dental visits keep patients from ending up with rotting, broken, or missing chompers...and from ending up forever alone. A survey by Match.com found that sixty percent of single men and seventy-two percent of single women cared more about what a potential date's teeth looked like than anything else.
It's nice to know an ax murderer can still take a girl out to dinner and a movie, so long as he's got that killer smile.
But increased education on the importance of good dental hygiene isn't the only thing that your career field has going for it. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, people who couldn't afford preventative dental visits in the past now have insurance that will send them flying toward your waiting toothbrush.
The ACA should generate an additional 13.9 million pediatric and 9.2 million adult dental visits over the next few years...which means you're going to be busy cleaning teeth for the foreseeable future.