Pennsylvania public school teachers earn significantly less than other similar full-time workers in Pennsylvania: Teacher wage and total compensation penalty using weekly and annual comparisons, 2010–2014, and projected total compensation penalty for new teachers in 2019--2020 under Act 5 pension plan, controlling for education and other variables
| Weekly | Annual | |
|---|---|---|
| Wage penalty, 2010–2014 | -12.1%*** | -16.5%*** |
| (Standard error) | (0.008) | (0.008) |
| Total compensation penalty, 2010–2014 | -6.8%*** | -9.7%*** |
| (Standard error) | (0.008) | (0.008) |
| Total compensation penalty for new teachers under Act 5 pension plan, 2019–2020 | -10.0%*** | -14.3%*** |
| (Standard error) | (0.008) | (0.008) |
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.0001
Notes: Teacher penalty is the percent by which teachers earn less than comparable nonteacher employees. Compensation penalty under Act 5 pension plan is the projected penalty for teachers in the 2019–2020 school year, when Act 5 legislation goes into effect. Table reports the estimated coefficient and the standard error on the indicator for public school teacher. The weekly wage and compensation regression specifications include educational variables of some college, associate degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, professional degree, and doctorate, and also controls for age, age squared, female, black, Hispanic, Asian, married, noncitizen, and weeks worked per year. The specification for annual wage and compensation omits weeks worked.
Source: Author’s analysis of American Community Survey 2011–2015 data (Flood et al. 2017), Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey 2013 data (BLS 2013), and Pennsylvania Department of Education-2057 Annual Financial Reports. See appendix for further details.