Teacher pay rises in 2023—but not enough to shrink pay gap with other college graduates

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum

Teacher pay rises in 2023 but the relative earnings gap between public schoolteachers and comparable college graduates in other professions remains substantial. Despite a 1.7% improvement in average weekly wages, the regression-adjusted teacher pay penalty reached 26.6% in 2023, up from 6.1% in 1996, leaving teachers at 73.4 cents per dollar. Benefits do not fully offset the widening wage penalty; by state, the penalty exceeds 20% across 36 states.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Summary

Key findings

Why this matters

How to fix it

Charting the problem

Data and relevant information

Findings

Teacher pay rises in 2023—but not enough to shrink pay gap with other college graduates Report • By Sylvia Allegretto • September 12, 2024 • Washington, DC View this report [at](at epi.org/288049)[ epi.org/288049](at epi.org/288049) | Overview
Teacher pay rises in 2023—but not enough to shrink pay gap with other college graduates | |

Teacher pay rises in 2023—but not enough to shrink pay gap with other college graduates
By Sylvia Allegretto September 12, 2024
Read the full report
[epi.org/288049](epi.org/288049) | | --- | --- | --- | | | Summary: Despite a small improvement of 1.7% in teachers’ average weekly wages, the relative pay penalty between public schoolteachers and college graduates in other professions remains large. | | | Key findings
• The pay penalty for teachers—the regression-adjusted gap between the weekly wages of teachers and college graduates working in other professions—grew to a record 26.6% in 2023, a significant increase from 6.1% in 1996.
• On average, teachers earned 73.4 cents for every dollar relative to the earnings of similar other professionals in 2023. This is much less than the
93.9 cents on the dollar they made in 1996.
• Although teachers typically receive better benefits packages than other professionals do, this “benefits advantage” is not sufficiently large to offset the growing wage penalty for teachers.
• The relative teacher weekly wage penalty exceeded 20% in 36 states—the largest was in Colorado at 38.4% and the smallest was in Wyoming at 9.0% .
Why this matters
Teacher quality is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. Closing the growing pay gap between teachers and other college graduate professionals is critical to public education.
How to fix it
Meaningfully boosting teacher pay requires targeted policy action by local and state governments, with support from the federal government, to improve funding for schools. Additionally, public-sector collective bargaining should be expanded, given the role of unions in advocating for improved job quality and abetter pay. | | Charting the problem
| View online [at](at epi.org/288049)[ epi.org/288049](at epi.org/288049) T his report provides an update to a series that has tracked public school teacher wages and compensation over the last two decades.1 Because public school teachers must attain at least a bachelor’s degree to teach in the U.S., this research compares the pay of public school teachers with that of college graduates who work in other professions. Documenting the widening divergence between the wages of teachers and their college-educated counterparts overtime allows for a historical analysis of an issue that is critical to the future of the United States. Providing teachers with compensation commensurate with that of similarly educated and experienced professionals is necessary to retain and attract qualified workers into the teaching profession. Data and relevant information In analyzing differences in pay between public schoolteachers and other college graduates, I use two sources of data, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) .2 First, I use Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (CPS-ORG) data for the weekly wage analyses (BLS 2024a) . I focus on weekly wages, as opposed to weekly hours worked or the length of the work year, to account for the “summers off” issue that affects teachers but not other college graduates.3 The sample is restricted to full-time workers (working at least 35 hours per week) aged between 18 and 64, with at least a bachelor’s degree, because teachers today need at least a bachelor’s degree to teach. The sample is further limited to those who reported their wage information directly (those who didn’t respond and whose wages were estimated by BLS are excluded) .4 To preserve data confidentiality, the BLS records weekly wages only up to a defined threshold, so the wage amou

FAQs

How much did teachers’ average weekly wages improve in 2023?

Teachers’ average weekly wages improved by 1.7% in 2023.

What was the regression-adjusted teacher pay penalty in 2023?

The regression-adjusted teacher pay penalty grew to 26.6% in 2023.

Why are benefits not enough to offset teacher wage penalties?

Although teachers often receive better benefits packages than other professionals, the benefits advantage is not large enough to offset the growing wage penalty.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum