Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is Wisconsin, at $82,620. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and South Dakota comes out ahead, worth $68,271. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for career/technical education teachers, postsecondary: Wisconsin leads at $82,620 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting South Dakota to $68,271 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$63,820
People doing it
114,110
Highest paid
$82,620
WI
Best off, really
$68,271
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$41,960
Highest tenth
$108,620
Lowest, really
$38,159
HI
States with data
51
National average
$72,060
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $38,159 and $68,271. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 114,110 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $63,820. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $63,820, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for career/technical education teachers, postsecondary cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $38,159 to $68,271. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 114,110 workers, career/technical education teachers, postsecondary sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for career/technical education teachers, postsecondary, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $41,960 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $63,820 |
| Top tenth earn over | $108,620 |
| This salary | $63,820 |
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 Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$63,820around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $41,960 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $63,820 |
| Top tenth | $108,620 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Kansas · $48,790 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wisconsin · $82,620 |
| Spread | $33,830 |
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 | $65,180 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $67,075 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $72,940 | $60,143 | $68,271 |
| WI | $82,620 | $63,503 | $68,212 |
| ND | $73,570 | $60,411 | $68,206 |
| WY | $74,210 | $61,037 | $67,186 |
| SC | $79,610 | $61,873 | $66,403 |
| AK | $77,310 | $63,218 | $62,152 |
| OK | $67,060 | $53,490 | $60,587 |
| MN | $76,920 | $59,236 | $60,189 |
| WV | $65,200 | $52,471 | $58,449 |
| WA | $77,530 | $63,372 | $58,374 |
| IA | $62,270 | $50,459 | $56,845 |
| TN | $62,310 | $52,246 | $56,473 |
| TX | $65,180 | $54,552 | $56,138 |
| MA | $78,780 | $60,633 | $56,018 |
| AL | $62,580 | $49,766 | $55,313 |
| CO | $70,130 | $55,789 | $55,029 |
| KY | $61,080 | $49,238 | $54,425 |
| OH | $60,600 | $49,922 | $54,374 |
| NM | $60,490 | $49,106 | $54,330 |
| NY | $75,170 | $58,250 | $54,123 |
| NE | $60,490 | $48,735 | $53,925 |
| MI | $63,440 | $50,709 | $53,840 |
| NC | $62,390 | $50,330 | $53,463 |
| NV | $61,740 | $51,788 | $53,401 |
| CA | $76,630 | $59,681 | $53,012 |
| NJ | $72,440 | $57,337 | $52,659 |
| MO | $59,640 | $48,235 | $52,565 |
| AZ | $64,930 | $53,131 | $52,550 |
| LA | $56,480 | $46,254 | $52,356 |
| ID | $59,730 | $47,861 | $52,350 |
| PA | $63,160 | $50,990 | $52,297 |
| VT | $62,450 | $50,347 | $52,100 |
| RI | $65,210 | $52,551 | $51,819 |
| NH | $65,040 | $54,440 | $51,677 |
| MT | $57,270 | $46,261 | $51,263 |
| IN | $57,820 | $46,962 | $50,944 |
| ME | $61,740 | $48,941 | $50,404 |
| IL | $62,480 | $49,435 | $50,007 |
| GA | $60,320 | $48,236 | $49,883 |
| DE | $62,400 | $49,422 | $49,794 |
| FL | $59,990 | $50,382 | $48,701 |
| MD | $62,060 | $49,461 | $47,575 |
| AR | $50,120 | $41,056 | $47,459 |
| OR | $65,430 | $49,578 | $47,343 |
| MS | $50,670 | $40,959 | $46,921 |
| VA | $57,820 | $46,074 | $45,732 |
| CT | $59,420 | $47,406 | $45,719 |
| KS | $48,790 | $38,949 | $43,293 |
| UT | $50,740 | $40,692 | $42,832 |
| DC | $59,220 | $47,360 | $42,743 |
| HI | $51,990 | $41,444 | $38,159 |
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 $63,820 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Wisconsin keeps the most at $63,503.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $38,159.
- All wage figures for career/technical education teachers, postsecondary are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $63,820. 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.
- The household modeled for career/technical education teachers, postsecondary is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Wisconsin retains the most, $63,503. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to career/technical education teachers, postsecondary uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Hawaii at $38,159. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $38,159 — and the two source series are dated independently.