Education Jobs Update, March 2026
More signs of cooling
We’re well past the peak of the “worker shortage” era. The latest data suggest the education labor market has cooled considerably since the frenzy of 2021–22.
Within public education specifically, job openings were down 24% last year compared to 2022. Hires were down 18%.
2022 was also the peak year for employee separations in public education. They’ve fallen each year since then, and by 2025 separation rates in public K–12 and higher education were 11 percent lower than their 2022 peak.
That cooling shows up in the latest employment numbers as well. The newest data, released last week, include final totals for the 2025 calendar year. They’re… not great. Here are the year-over-year changes within education:
Public K-12: Up 0.7% (+58,000 jobs)
Public higher ed: Down 1.6% (-42,000 jobs)
Private childcare services: Up 0.4% (+4,000 jobs)
Other state and local government employers also didn’t add many new jobs. State governments added just 3,000 jobs outside of education (a gain of 0.1%). Local governments beyond K-12 looked the strongest, adding 88,000 jobs (a gain of 1.3%).
To put the education numbers in historical perspective, the job growth in public K-12 looked about like it did in the late-2010s. Positive but modest. For higher ed it was one of the worst years, outside of COVID, since 1977. The tepid growth in childcare employment looked similar to the years in and around the Great Recession period of 2008-2013.
These are not flattering comparisons. I’ll keep watching the numbers closely, especially as we head into education’s typical summer hiring rollercoaster.
Reading List
Jessica Baghian: What “good” looks like in practice
WSJ: AI seems to be, “increasing the speed, density and complexity of work rather than reducing it”
Paul Kirschner: Ten things in education that look right but aren’t
Josh McGee and Gema Zamarro: Raising base salaries increases teacher retention rates in Arkansas
Bob Shireman: Cool charts on earnings distributions by educational attainment