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SamuelAdams

Why not just go directly to the source?

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#25-0000

Secondary School Teachers: annual mean wage: $64,230

If we zoom in on a particular type of teacher, you get ranges:

Middle school teachers https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252022.htm

bottom 10% earn 39k or less.

bottom 25% earn 46k

50% earn 58k

75% earn 74k

90% earn 93k

Based on these metrics, it seems like a fine occupation. But I wonder how many teachers are new versus how many stay in the field a long time? I also wonder how location-dependent these salaries are.

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I think it's more useful to look at new teacher salaries by state to get around tenure and averaging effects [1]. Fine vs. not fine varies a lot by location in this list.

[1] http://www.nea.org/home/2017-2018-average-starting-teacher-s...

For others who might be interested, the lowest starting salary listed is Montanta ($31,418), highest is DC ($55,209).

Scaled up from 10 months to 12 months of work, that's $37,702 and $66,251, respectively. The median household income is $53,386 in Montana and $82,372 in DC [1][2]. In both cases, even the un-scaled teacher's salary easily accounts for half of a typical household's income.

So even without tenure and averaging effects, this data backs up the article's claims.

1. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/washington-dc/

2. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/montana

It didn't feel good as a teenager to hear teachers complain about education levels, workload, and salary when my intelligent and hard-working parents made less, worked as much, and had much less employment certainty.

There's more to the story though. In my partner's school district it takes an average of 7 years of supply teaching before you land a full time position. You are making about half as much and get little benefits during that time. So after schooling that's 13 years of preparation for a 64k job.

She also works a lot more than 40 hour weeks and has to deal with some pretty intense stuff.

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