With the September employment data in hand, we can look at the number of public educators who are starting work or going back to school this year. The number of teachers and education staff fell dramatically during the Great Recession and has failed to get anywhere near its prerecession level, let alone the level that would be required to keep up with an expanding student population. In addition to losses from the Great Recession, the pursuit of austerity at all levels of government has meant that public education jobs are still 128,000 less than they were nine years ago.

Over the last year, the number of public educators, of which roughly half are teachers (Table 1), fell by 10,600. These losses are likely unaffected in September by the unusually stormy employment numbers because the deceleration in local public education jobs began a couple months prior. There were 6,300 fewer jobs between August 2016 and August 2017 and only 4,400 additional jobs between July 2016 and 2017—while employment in public education grew the previous year over the same period, rising 76,000 between July-September 2016 and July-September 2015. The recent slowdown in local education jobs is troubling on top of years of losses. To be clear, this shortfall is due to the recession and austerity-induced cutbacks, which directly impacts state and local public employment.

Furthermore, if we include the number of jobs that should have been created just to keep up with enrollment, we are currently experiencing a 327,000 job shortfall in public education. The costs of a significant gap in public education employment are measurable. For instance, this overall reduction in public education jobs could translate into larger class sizes, fewer teacher aides, fewer guidance counselors, fewer extracurricular activities, and changes to the curricula. Shortsighted austerity measures at all levels of government hit children in today’s schools. In order to get back to prerecession levels of educators, we need strong public investment in education that will help students and educators alike.

*Edited for clarification October 10, 2017.