But the average salaries do not tell the whole story, according to research from Sylvia Allegretto of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on low- and middle-income workers. They have documented the erosion of teacher salaries compared with other similarly educated workers. Calling this erosion a “
wage penalty,” they argue that female teachers make 15.6% less than comparably educated women and that male teachers make 26.8% less than comparably educated men. It is true that teachers in most places get better benefits than many other workers, but benefits make up a larger portion of their compensation than for other workers and are no longer enough to offset their lower wages. The five states with the largest wage penalties for teachers, they found — Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Colorado and Virginia — all experienced protests or strikes in 2018. But there is a wage penalty for teachers in every single state, according to their study. California as a state has among the lowest wage penalties, but Los Angeles and Oakland also has among the highest costs of living in the country.