• • 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%.

—— From the Economic Policy Institute   EPI.org