Teachers earn a record 21.4 percent less in wages than comparable workers: Teacher wage gap—public school teacher wages relative to comparable workers, 1996–2018
| Year | Wage gap |
|---|---|
| 1996 | -6.3% |
| 1997 | -7.1% |
| 1998 | -9.8% |
| 1999 | -11.6% |
| 2000 | -11.6% |
| 2001 | -13.0% |
| 2002 | -13.0% |
| 2003 | -12.4% |
| 2004 | -12.0% |
| 2005 | -13.7% |
| 2006 | -15.1% |
| 2007 | -13.0% |
| 2008 | -14.6% |
| 2009 | -13.7% |
| 2010 | -13.5% |
| 2011 | -14.3% |
| 2012 | -15.5% |
| 2013 | -16.7% |
| 2014 | -17.1% |
| 2015 | -19.0% |
| 2016 | -20.2% |
| 2017 | -20.7% |
| 2018 | -21.4% |
Note: The figure shows regression-adjusted weekly wage penalties for public school teachers (elementary, middle, and secondary) relative to other college graduates.
The figure shows regression-adjusted weekly wage penalties for public school teachers (elementary, middle, and secondary) relative to other college graduates. The dependent variable is (log) weekly wages with indicator controls on public school teacher, private school teacher, gender, and married, along with indicator sets on education (M.A., professional degree, Ph.D.) and race/ethnicity (black, Hispanic, other); also included are age (as a quartic) and state fixed effects. Estimates are omitted for 1994 and 1995, as imputation flags are incomplete or not available; data points for these years are represented by dotted lines. See Appendix A in Allegretto and Mishel 2019 for more details.
Source: Adapted from Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel, The Teacher Weekly Wage Penalty Hit 21.4 Percent in 2018, a Record High, Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, April 2019
This chart appears in:
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