The teacher pay penalty reached a record high in 2024

Summary: Over the past three decades, stagnant weekly wages of public school teachers have fallen further and further behind those of college graduates who chose other careers, resulting in an ever increasing teacher pay gap that hit a record high in 2024.

Key findings

Over the last decade, inflation-adjusted weekly wages for teachers declined by $46.39 but increased by $220.46 for other college graduates.

The regression-adjusted relative gap between the weekly wages of teachers and college graduates working in other professions grew to a record 26.9% in 2024, a significant increase from 6.1% in 1996.

On average, teachers earned 73.1 cents for every dollar relative to the earnings of other similar professionals in 2024—much less than the 93.9 cents earned in 1996.

https://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-penalty-reached-a-record-high-in-2024-three-decades-of-leaving-public-school-teachers-behind/