Education may be one of the most critical things in the lives of the nation's children, but finding adults to deliver that education has become increasingly tricky as other industries are looking to hire your former art teacher, calculus teacher, STEM instructor ... and the rest of them.
What started as a mass departure in 2020 for teachers when COVID-19 sent students across the world to their kitchen tables and couches for class has continued to snowball throughout the last year.
Federal data shows just how bad the issue is for classrooms, with approximately 550,000 private-education teachers walking off the job from January to November 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported.
More than 800,000 resignations were handed in from workers in state and local education during that same time.
People quitting in educational services shot up 148% during the 11 month period, and those leaving in state and local education rose 40%, the data showed.
While there have been reports of people walking off the job across the nation in what has been called the Great Resignation, teachers are quitting at higher rates. In comparison, people leaving jobs in the retail industry rose 27% during the same time frame.
LinkedIn shared that the number of teachers who left for a new career increased 62% in 2021, the Journal reported.
Across the nation, school districts are doing their best to find ways to provide teachers, from government officials being certified in New Mexico to reports of local police officers stepping up in Oklahoma.
However, teachers aren't just leaving to go to other teaching jobs.
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Recruiters and career coaches say that teachers are being sought after for their ability to absorb and transmit information, manage stress, and multitask, the Journal reported.
Skills that teachers possess are valuable to the IT, consulting, software development, and hospital industries.
According to LinkedIn, this is the case with teachers moving from the classroom to sales roles, jobs as instructional coaches, behavioral health technicians, and software engineers.
One significant factor swaying teachers to pursue other careers is pay. In 2020 the average salary for teachers was $62,000. However, this number can be affected by region and seniority, with some teachers making less than $50,000 and others making more than $80,000 depending on where they are in the country.
The higher potential for career and pay growth in private industry has been a major lure to leave Zoom learning, mask fights and pandemic-stressed classrooms behind as a distant memory.
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