Data: NEA Rankings & Estimates, April 2025 (https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher)
Tool: Mapchart (https://www.mapchart.net/usa.html#)
Posted by snakkerdudaniel
![[OC] Average Teacher Salary by US State 2023-24](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/fcop3hgepfof1-1536x1075.png "[OC] Average Teacher Salary by US State 2023-24")
Data: NEA Rankings & Estimates, April 2025 (https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher)
Tool: Mapchart (https://www.mapchart.net/usa.html#)
Posted by snakkerdudaniel
40 Comments
Data: NEA Rankings & Estimates, April 2025 (https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher)
Tool: Mapchart (https://www.mapchart.net/usa.html#)
It’s wild that the average teacher makes over $100k in CA but the starting salary for a tenure track professor at Berkeley is only $80k
Every color-coded map of the united states
Mississippi seems to always be last in everything.
Is this adjusted for cost of living?
And then Oklahoma was like, anyone coming from New York or California has to take a woke test, as if anyone is leaving those states for literal fucking Oklahoma.
The couple states I checked, this is about double the average income of the state.
Not sure about other states but Colorado teachers are getting a really bad deal. HCOL and you make $50k/yr? Might as well just work at Whole Foods at that point
Wtf I’m nowhere near 60k in NM
Damn, The East Coast & Cali really had to up the average salary lots since the last time I checked 😂 I’m just getting old I guess
I left my software job to teach in a public school for four years. It was incredibly rewarding and I still occasionally run students of mine and it feels great to hear them talk about what they learned in my class and how it has helped them in their later education and careers.
Having said that, I think I have a unique perspective in having worked in a professional situation where you I was well compensated and treated with respect, then become a public school teacher, then gone back to software. As a teacher, I worked 2x harder than I ever have in software for a fraction of the pay and support . I used to take sick days so I could get through the dozens of hours of grading it took to give kids the feedback they needed to improve. I had 35 students per class and trying to give differentiated instruction and just maintain order was often difficult.
Teachers should be among the highest paid people in our society. It should be a job that has incredible competition because people want the high pay and benefits. That we pay teachers so poorly in this country is an indictment of our values.
Really is just another one of those maps that are just ‘shit places to live’.
A shame they don’t have the median available
Would be interesting to see it adjusted by cost of living in the given state
My first teaching job in AZ was $39k
This is the sixth or seventh map in a row that I’ve seen where Mississippi is the worst at something. 😂😂
Oh I thought it was just K-12, but I know specialized high school teachers (such as languages, econ, psychology, etc.) can earn over 100k a year, but it’s going to only be towards the end of their careers. It sounds like it also includes the university level.
The most depressing thing I learned, thanks to how conservatives weaponized pay transparency against teachers, is that my first job out of school made more than my thesis advisor, she worked at that school for decades, lives in a tiny little apartment, and pretty much has nothing as that is all she can afford.
Now compare it to the poverty line.
Uhhh who are they polling? Wa state teachers do not make that much. Not the vast majority
Seems about right for what an average job for a 4 year degree would be.
Salary adjusted for purchasing power would be better.
This map is unfortunately not as useful as it seems because the years of service are so important. My sister started at I think 35k, and her max is 108k.
This should be compared to avg. cost of living. And maybe presented as a ratio per state
Shouldn’t this be adjusted for cost of living to be more useful?
I feel like California, New York, and Massachusetts should come with an asterisk because of the high volume of university professors. They are skewing the average by an incredible margin.
People talk about it but they don’t really grasp how some of the most important parts of education are so poorly funded. Teachers and meals. Plenty of waste and bloat in other areas that could be focused just on paying high quality teachers and providing nutritious meals.
Median income for the state of Mississippi is around $54k so that honestly doesn’t seem that terrible
It would be interesting to see this mapped against state-level student outcomes.
I assume California, with its highest paid teachers, is number 1 in all educational benchmarks. Oh wait. They are below average
Teachers also generally work 9 months if people arent remembering that
California teachers are overpaid for their results
Would be fascinating to see this adjusted by cost of living in the state.
I shit you not, Oklahoma teachers rallied against their own raises.
This is probably why I don’t feel that bad for teachers … all the ones I know are in CA and get paid 6-figs + pension plan contributions. It’s not that bad.
Now do it for cost of living
Me as a full-time librarian making less than a Mississippi teacher.
Now do it relative to cost of living.
What’s crazier about this is the difference in salary increases over time. A teacher in Massachusetts will start out at a pretty reasonable number for their qualifications depending on where they work, but they can generally double that number or better over the course of their career if they keep up with licensing requirements and professional development.
A teacher in Florida will start out only a few thousand lower than a similar sized district in Massachusetts, but over the next 20 years their salaries are barely going to increase enough to cover cost of living adjustments.
I know that because I’ve lived in both states and decided not to move back to Florida when I realized how much money I would lose by building my career there. Not to mention all the other stuff there
This gets worse when you cinsoder that “average” includes the 25+ year veteran teachers.
I feel like this would be way worse if it was adjusted for cost of living. Like teachers making $60k in phoenix, AZ are WAY worse off than those making $60k in Birmingham, AL.