The average teacher salary is over $70,000 per year, but most Americans assume teachers are paid far less. The typical American erroneously believes the average teacher salary is about $45,000. Due to teachers’ perceived low pay, most people with math and science degrees won’t even consider a job as a math or science teacher. They want to be paid at least $60,000 per year, which is less than what most math and science teachers actually receive:
Most teachers like teaching, enjoy the flexible work schedule, live comfortably and are no more likely to quit their profession than accountants or social workers, writes Chad Aldeman.
He cites Get the Facts Out, a campaign launched by the Colorado School of Mines and six national STEM societies to persuade more young people to become teachers.
Nearly half of science, technology, engineering and math majors consider becoming a K-12 teacher, an American Physical Society survey found in 2017. Many cite the low pay. But they “underestimate teacher compensation, and the salaries they report would interest them in teaching are close to actual salaries.”
Americans wildly underestimate how many teachers earn, writes Aldeman. The National Education Association reports the average teacher salary was $66,745 in 2021-22….
“Teacher job satisfaction is high and has been remarkably stable over time, even during the pandemic and its aftermath,” writes Aldeman, who analyzed the long-running General Social Survey.
According to Census Bureau data compiled by USA Facts, K-12 teachers do not have high attrition compared to other workers. They “stayed in their chosen profession at similar rates as civil engineers, social workers, postsecondary teachers and police officers.”
Get the Facts Out also tells STEM majors that middle- and high-school science and math teachers get paid more than most college teaching faculty, and can find jobs anywhere in the U.S. or overseas. “Most teaching jobs have better retirement benefits than other jobs you can get with the same degree.”
The median American worker in 2022 was paid about $50,000 per year. That was well below the average teacher salary of $66,745 in 2021-22. Moreover, teachers have good healthcare and very good retirement benefits, compared to most other occupations.
As The 74 Million notes,
Teachers may not get rich, but they live comfortably middle-class lives. Plus, teachers get to retire a couple of years earlier than other workers…In 2021, Education Next asked a random sample of Americans to guess how much the average teacher earned in their state. Those guesses weren’t just wrong, they were consistently too low — by about 50%, or about $22,000.
