Teacher Pay Lags Compared to Comparable Professions, National Study Finds

From the Economic Policy Institute

Pay for the nation’s teachers is considerably lower than for other workers with similar education and skills, according to a new book by the Economic Policy Institute. Despite growing national attention to the schools’ need to recruit and retain highly skilled teachers, that wage gap grew larger over the last decade, the book says.

"How Does Teacher Pay Compare?" reviews recent analyses of teacher pay and benefits and provides its own detailed analysis of trends in teacher pay and how it measures up in the labor market. Authors Sylvia Allegretto (EPI economist), Sean Corcoran (EPI research associate) and Lawrence Mishel (EPI President) found what amounts to a teaching penalty, a pay gap that has grown in recent years. Since 1993, the researchers said, teacher wages have fallen 11.5% relative to workers with similar education and skills. Moreover, the authors also document that there was no improvement in benefits that offset this increased wage disadvantage.

“Over time, the wage gap between teachers and their peers becomes a gulf that can sabotage schools’ best efforts to recruit the best teachers and to keep them as their skills and experience grow,” said co-author Sylvia Allegretto. “This gap puts teachers in an untenable position, where they have to choose between their students and their own families’ well-being.”

The book comes at a time when the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act mandates school systems to have more highly qualified teachers, and scholars continuously affirm the importance of quality teaching. Yet, pay disparities will make it more difficult for school systems to keep promising professionals from being lured away by higher-paying fields that consistently pay more. Some of the book’s major findings include:

• Teachers’ wages have fallen farther behind those of other workers since 1996. While other college graduates – in fact, all other workers – saw weekly wages rise 12%, teachers’ inflation-adjusted weekly wages rose hardly at all - just 0.8%.
• In 2003, the average weekly wage of male teachers was $899; in contrast, the average weekly wages for college graduates who were not teachers was $1,246.
• Between 1993 and 2002 teachers’ weekly wages lagged behind that of other workers with similar education and experience, by 13% among women and by 12.5% among men.
• Male teachers earned 23.1% less and female teachers 8.9% less than their counterparts, according to 2003 figures.
• Compared to other workers in comparably skilled occupations teachers earned $116 less per week in 2002, a weekly wage disadvantage of 12.2%. However, because teachers worked more hours per week, the hourly wage disadvantage was actually 14.1%.
• Weekly wages have grown far more slowly for teachers than for workers in comparable professions, deteriorating almost 15% since 1993.

“Our findings indicate a sizable erosion of teacher pay over the last 10 years, relative to other professions, and this will make sustaining and improving teacher quality more difficult,” said coauthor Sean Corcoran, a leading expert on long-term trends in teacher quality.

Teacher Pay examines wage data from the Current Population Survey (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and finds that between 1996 and 2003 teacher inflation-adjusted weekly wages grew considerably slower than those of other college graduates, 0.8% versus 11.8%. In analyses that compare teachers to those with similar education and experience, the authors find that teacher weekly wages eroded by roughly 6% for both male and female teachers over the 1996-2003 period. These wage losses followed a similar 6% erosion that occurred over the 1993-96 period.

Over the longer period from 1979 to 2003, the weekly wages of female teachers eroded 18.5% relative to comparably educated and experienced workers, while the equivalent weekly wage erosion among male teachers was 9.3%.

Teacher Pay uses newly available BLS data on occupational skills to identify 16 occupations – including architects, inspectors, journalists, accountants, and computer programmers – that are comparable to teachers in the education and skills required. In 2002, teachers earned $116 per week less than those working in these comparable occupations even though teachers report working more hours each week. Teachers’ weekly wages have grown far more slowly than those of their peers; teacher wages have deteriorated about 15% since 1993 and by 12% since 1983 relative to comparably skilled occupations.

Some analysts discount evidence of poor teacher wages, or believe teachers are already well compensated, because teachers are thought to enjoy good benefits. Teacher Pay finds that teachers do have a greater share of their compensation in health and pension benefits (13.5%) than do other professionals, whose share is 11.3%. Some of these higher costs, however, are offset by the lower payroll taxes paid by teacher employers because some teachers are not in the Social Security program. Moreover, teachers lose ground in other benefit categories, such as paid leave, premium pay and bonuses.

In short, the authors find that a 14% wage disadvantage for teachers translates into a very similar 12.5% disadvantage in total compensation, including all benefits.

The book further refutes claims that teachers are actually well paid when work hours are taken into account. These claims have been based on comparisons of hourly wages of teachers to those of other professionals provided in the BLS National Compensation Survey (NCS). "Teacher Pay" points out that these claims are not valid because the data on which it is based report work hours differently for teachers than for other occupations. Even the BLS statistician in charge of the survey’s methodology agrees with the authors that hourly wage comparisons using the NCS are inappropriate.

“If we as a society want to provide a qualified teacher in every classroom, then we’ll have to deal with the sizable erosion of teacher pay relative to their peers that has occurred over the last 10 years,” said co-author Lawrence Mishel. “Maintaining or improving teacher quality cannot be done on the cheap.”

The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic think tank founded in 1986. The Institute can found on the Web at http://www.epinet.org.

Posted August 26, 2004