Quoted courtesty of http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3347411.html
A substantial body of evidence implies that teachers are not underpaid relative to other professionals. Using data on household median earnings from the U.S. Department of Labor, I compared teachers with seven other professional occupations: accountants, biological and life scientists, registered nurses, social workers, lawyers and judges, artists, and editors and reporters. Weekly pay for teachers in 2001 was about the same (within 10 percent) as for accountants, biological and life scientists, registered nurses, and editors and reporters, while teachers earned significantly more than social workers and artists. Only lawyers and judges earned significantly more than teachersâ??as one would expect, given that the educational training to become a lawyer is longer and more demanding.
Teachers, moreover, enjoy longer vacations and work far fewer days per year than most professional workers. Consider data from the National Compensation Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which computes hourly earnings per worker. The average hourly wage for all workers in the category â??professional specialtyâ?? was $27.49 in 2000. Meanwhile, elementary-school teachers earned $28.79 per hour; secondary-school teachers earned $29.14 per hour; and special-education teachers earned $29.97 per hour. The average earnings for all three categories of teachers exceeded the average for all professional workers. Indeed, the average hourly wage for teachers even topped that of the highest-paid major category of workers, those whose jobs are described as â??executive, administrative, and managerial.â?? Teachers earned more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, biological and life scientists, atmospheric and space scientists, registered nurses, physical therapists, university-level foreign-language teachers, librarians, technical writers, musicians, artists, and editors and reporters. Note that a majority of these occupations requires as much or even more educational training as does Kâ??12 teaching.
Government data on wages and salaries also exclude fringe benefits. Typically, teachersâ?? retirement and health insurance benefits are more generous than the average professionalâ??s, particularly those who work in the private sector. Federal data suggest that, on average, teachers receive a package of benefits valued at more than 26 percent of their salaries. By contrast, the average for â??all domestic industriesâ?? is about 19 percent; for private industries it is even less, below 17 percent. Take health insurance. Federal data suggest that about one-half of teachers pay nothing for single coverage (the employer pays everything), whereas the proportion of private â??professional and technicalâ?? workers who pay nothing is only one-fourth. If direct hourly compensation averages perhaps 5 to 8 percent more for teachers than for all professional workers, and fringe benefits are perhaps 5 percent more, all told, teachersâ?? average hourly compensation plus benefits exceeds the average for all professional workers by roughly 10 to 15 percent. In addition, teachers experience more job security, rarely suffering layoffs or firings. An architectâ??s income falls with recession-induced declines in construction spending, while the economy is currently littered with unemployed computer programmers, whose jobs disappeared when the dotcom bubble popped. Most risk-averse persons would gladly accept some decline in average annual income in order to avoid unexpected adverse shocks to their standard of living. Thus, in a â??risk-adjustedâ?? sense, teacher pay is often substantially higher than that of comparable occupations.
