Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- California pays this job the most, $129,150. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Montana wins, at $83,331. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For biological science teachers, postsecondary, California leads both nominally at $129,150 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Montana first at $83,331. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$84,620
People doing it
50,190
Highest paid
$129,150
CA
Best off, really
$83,331
MT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$52,150
Highest tenth
$169,900
Lowest, really
$46,487
FL
States with data
49
National average
$102,840
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.24%
MT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $46,487 to $83,331.
- Just 50,190 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 49 jurisdictions have a figure, with $84,620 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in biological science teachers, postsecondary is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $46,487 to $83,331 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 50,190 are employed nationally in biological science teachers, postsecondary — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 49 jurisdictions carry a published median for biological science teachers, postsecondary. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $52,150 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $84,620 |
| Top tenth earn over | $169,900 |
| This salary | $84,620 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$84,620around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $52,150 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $84,620 |
| Top tenth | $169,900 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Florida · $57,140 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $129,150 |
| Spread | $72,010 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $82,470 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $84,868 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| MT | $100,480 | $75,201 | $83,331 |
| NM | $98,820 | $74,839 | $82,799 |
| MI | $103,620 | $77,574 | $82,364 |
| ND | $90,740 | $72,155 | $81,465 |
| CA | $129,150 | $91,621 | $81,382 |
| NH | $102,410 | $80,875 | $76,772 |
| RI | $102,300 | $77,291 | $76,215 |
| DE | $101,380 | $74,691 | $75,253 |
| IL | $99,060 | $73,760 | $74,614 |
| WY | $82,930 | $67,171 | $73,938 |
| CO | $98,680 | $74,618 | $73,601 |
| MN | $96,880 | $71,921 | $73,077 |
| MA | $105,050 | $77,800 | $71,879 |
| WA | $97,280 | $77,266 | $71,173 |
| SD | $76,570 | $62,697 | $71,170 |
| NV | $85,040 | $68,656 | $70,794 |
| LA | $79,010 | $62,429 | $70,666 |
| AR | $77,670 | $61,056 | $70,578 |
| IN | $83,130 | $64,889 | $70,391 |
| NE | $81,190 | $62,957 | $69,661 |
| CT | $96,470 | $72,141 | $69,574 |
| TN | $78,940 | $64,364 | $69,572 |
| GA | $88,020 | $66,959 | $69,244 |
| IA | $78,060 | $61,391 | $69,159 |
| OH | $79,600 | $63,356 | $69,006 |
| TX | $82,470 | $66,848 | $68,791 |
| KS | $81,300 | $61,777 | $68,667 |
| ID | $81,620 | $62,777 | $68,665 |
| MO | $80,970 | $62,924 | $68,573 |
| PA | $85,970 | $66,671 | $68,380 |
| OR | $100,820 | $71,485 | $68,263 |
| SC | $82,300 | $63,587 | $68,243 |
| NY | $98,180 | $73,147 | $67,964 |
| AL | $77,540 | $60,079 | $66,777 |
| UT | $81,580 | $62,591 | $65,884 |
| WI | $78,920 | $61,120 | $65,652 |
| VT | $82,230 | $63,362 | $65,568 |
| ME | $84,080 | $63,611 | $65,513 |
| AZ | $83,030 | $65,568 | $64,852 |
| DC | $96,830 | $71,688 | $64,698 |
| NC | $77,700 | $60,900 | $64,692 |
| KY | $70,630 | $56,164 | $62,081 |
| MD | $83,500 | $63,970 | $61,530 |
| MS | $66,830 | $53,264 | $61,018 |
| VA | $79,190 | $60,747 | $60,296 |
| WV | $67,190 | $53,910 | $60,052 |
| OK | $65,960 | $52,711 | $59,705 |
| NJ | $79,540 | $61,910 | $56,859 |
| FL | $57,140 | $48,092 | $46,487 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $84,620 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In California, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $91,621.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Florida anchors the bottom at $46,487. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for biological science teachers, postsecondary are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $84,620. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Take-home calculations for biological science teachers, postsecondary assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $91,621, in California. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for biological science teachers, postsecondary deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.