Scratch Pad

Monday, February 05, 2007

Teacher Pay

An OpnionJournal piece cites some interesting stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics about pay for public school teachers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.

Of course, public school teacher earnings look less impressive when viewed on an annual basis than on an hourly basis. This is because teachers tend to work fewer hours per year.... That time off is worth money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing earnings. The appropriate way to compare earnings in this circumstance is to focus on hourly rates.

While these stats sound interesting, I was unable to reproduce them myself on the BLS website. You can try your hand too, if you like. That site requires Java to be installed.

According to my search, "Teachers, except college and universities" make $31.51/hr. Still, the number is reasonably close.

1 Comments:

  • I have spent quite a bit of time lately with some friends that are public school teachers. They are contracted to be at work from 8:00am until 4:00pm. However- their work doesn't stop there. Grading and prep time can in no way be completed during the contract time. I have spent hours helping friends prepare for class- outside of their contract time. I think it would be a conservative estimate to add 8-10 hours of work- outside of contract time. There effective pay rate would thus be reduced.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2/16/2007 1:43 PM  

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