Teacher Salaries Are Rising

They rose 4.9% year-over-year

The average teacher salary rose 4.9% year-over-year, according to the latest national data.

The graph below shows the year-over-year change in teacher salaries (in dark green) versus inflation (the dotted line).

Salaries were outpacing inflation for all of 2019 and the first half of 2020, but they were quickly swamped by the rapid increases in inflation throughout 2021 and 2022. That trend has since reversed, and salary gains have outpaced inflation over the last year.

On a cumulative basis, inflation-adjusted salaries are still below where they were pre-pandemic. Still, national averages can be hard to interpret, because they don’t look at the gains of individual teachers. That is, if higher-paid teachers retired and were replaced by lower-paid novices, that would depress the average even if every single active employee got a raise. Similarly, as schools have added teaching staff, that also depresses the average salary figures.

Still, this is good news, and some of the big wage gains teachers have won are starting to show up in the national numbers.