Visualization: Teacher wage penalties

Select a state and year from the menus below. The graph will display “teacher wage penalties”—the percentage difference in wages between teachers and comparable non-teacher professionals in a given year, for both the selected state and the national average in that year, at four different ages (25, 35, 45, and 55). The estimates indicate how much lower teachers’ wages are compared to their non-teacher counterparts, controlling for degree, weeks, and hours (and age). The U.S. averages are unweighted. Note that estimates include private school teachers. For more information on this measure, see our State Indicators Database user’s guide. You can also download the full dataset.

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Visualization by Bilan Jama and Lauren Schneider