When adjusting for inflation, the average annual salary for teachers in the United States has declined by 6.4% over the last decade, according to recent statistics.
The National Education Association estimates that the average national salary for public school teachers for the 2022-23 school year is $68,469.
When adjusted for inflation, the NEA shared in its annual Rankings and Estimates report that average salary has declined by 6.4% over the past decade.
In April, the NEA, which is one of the nation’s largest teacher unions, released an article stressing the low wages teachers are facing and how inflation has far outpaced what k-12 educators are making.
“Educators who dedicate their lives to students shouldn’t be struggling to support their own families,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in the article. “A career in education must not be a lifetime sentence of financial worry. Who will choose to teach under those circumstances?”
As the pay situation worsens, teacher shortages have become increasingly prominent, with educators looking for better in other career fields.
Examining the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, MoneyGeek analyzed the cities and metropolitan areas where teachers make the most and where they make the least.
At the top of the report from MoneyGeek is the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area, where teachers have an average take-home pay — defined as income after tax and living costs — of $68,271.
Rounding out the top five is the Auburn-Opelika, Alabama area ($66,080); El Paso, Texas ($65,260); the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas area ($65,198); and the San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas area ($64,031).
The city with the worst take-home pay is Honolulu, Hawaii, where teachers take home an average of $22,677, almost $10,000 less than the next closest city, the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Beaufort, South Carolina area, where the average take-home pay is $32,434.
Other cities in the bottom five include Prescott, Arizona ($34,976); Grand Junction, Colorado ($35,178); and Bloomington, Indiana ($36,224).
For the full list of the 178 metro areas examined in the MoneyGeek report, click here.