Teacher salary
What a teacher actually earns, from 855 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-09-06.
Switch the market above to see teacher pay in the 5 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Teacher pay is the clearest case on the board of a job that is secure and stuck. The blended US median is about 64,000 dollars with an OEWS median of 62,340, and unemployment is a low 2.2 percent, so the jobs are there. What is not there is growth: pay rose 4 percent since 2019, the slowest of any occupation we track, and well behind inflation over the same stretch. That gap between steady employment and stagnant pay is why teachers search for exits in the numbers you can measure. The most common one, instructional design, pays a starting band above the teacher median and rises past six figures, using the curriculum and facilitation skills a teacher already has. The exit is not a rejection of the work; it is a response to a pay curve that flattened while the cost of living did not. If you are weighing it, the skills transfer; the tooling and vocabulary are the gap.
Open teacher roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
Profesor de Filología - Sin Experiencia at TusclasesparticularesSpain · RemoteTodayApply
Docente Virtual de Repostería y Pastelería at Aprende InstituteMexico · RemoteTodayApply
Elementary School Teacher at Stride, Inc.United States · RemoteTodayApply- Docente Virtual de Mecánica Automotriz at Aprende InstituteMexico · Remote1d agoApply
- Lehrperson für Jugendliche in der beruflichen Integration 80 % at Bürgerspital Basel, BSB BildungBasel, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland1d agoApply
- Lehrperson Time-Out-Gruppe, 12 - 16 Lektionen at KSMLLiebefeld, Bern, Switzerland1d agoApply
By country
- United States$50,629$61,175$75,048
- United Kingdom$57,322$65,626$75,040
- Canada$47,714$59,334$65,683
- Australia$67,590$75,259$78,931
- Brazil$97,474$103,856$106,177
Switzerland · official wage bands
median CHF 9'697/month
Swiss postings do not state pay, so these are not posted salaries: they are the federal wage survey (Lohnstrukturerhebung 2024) for the ISCO group 23 Lehrkräfte: standardized gross monthly, full-time, 13th salary included pro rata. The band covers the whole occupation group, which is coarser than this occupation alone.
Annual ≈ CHF 116'364 at the median. Source: Bundesamt für Statistik, LSE 2024.
Top-paying US states
OEWS median by state, highest first.
- Washington$99,110
- California$98,190
- New York$82,480
- New Jersey$77,150
- Alaska$76,290
- Oregon$75,800
Is your offer fair?
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Quick answers
How much do teachers make?
The blended US median is about 64,000 dollars, with the official BLS OEWS median for elementary and middle-school teachers at 62,340. The range is a tight 57,000 to 76,000.
Why is teacher pay so low?
It is not only low but stagnant: teacher pay rose about 4 percent since 2019, the slowest on our board and behind inflation, even though unemployment is a secure 2.2 percent.
What can teachers do for higher pay?
The most common move is instructional design, which starts above the teacher median and rises past six figures on the same curriculum and facilitation skills. See the teacher-to-instructional-designer route.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 25-2021. Unemployment is the 2025 BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) CPS (Current Population Survey) annual-average rate for “Elementary and middle school teachers.” Live corpus 855 observations, 2026-09-06. Definitions in the glossary.