Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays this job the most, at $101,180. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $73,700 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Washington leads for career/technical education teachers, secondary school at $101,180 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $73,700 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$66,270
People doing it
111,420
Highest paid
$101,180
WA
Best off, really
$73,700
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$50,040
Highest tenth
$101,340
Lowest, really
$49,519
MT
States with data
49
National average
$72,680
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $49,519 and $73,700. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 111,420 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $66,270. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- This job is not published everywhere — 49 jurisdictions have a figure, with $66,270 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Washington tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation for career/technical education teachers, secondary school is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $49,519 to $73,700. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 111,420 workers, career/technical education teachers, secondary school 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.
- 49 jurisdictions carry a published median for career/technical education teachers, secondary school. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $50,040 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $66,270 |
| Top tenth earn over | $101,340 |
| This salary | $66,270 |
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, Secondary School
The national median for this job
$66,270around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $50,040 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $66,270 |
| Top tenth | $101,340 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Montana · $55,190 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $101,180 |
| Spread | $45,990 |
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 | $64,610 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $66,488 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $101,180 | $80,010 | $73,700 |
| CT | $100,810 | $74,951 | $72,285 |
| OH | $79,230 | $63,106 | $68,734 |
| MA | $98,020 | $73,206 | $67,634 |
| MI | $77,400 | $60,242 | $63,962 |
| VT | $79,220 | $61,443 | $63,583 |
| GA | $78,760 | $60,906 | $62,985 |
| RI | $81,820 | $63,742 | $62,855 |
| AK | $78,130 | $63,794 | $62,719 |
| WI | $74,310 | $58,150 | $62,462 |
| ME | $78,050 | $59,790 | $61,577 |
| PA | $75,760 | $59,801 | $61,335 |
| SC | $72,120 | $57,100 | $61,281 |
| DE | $79,230 | $60,570 | $61,026 |
| IL | $77,950 | $59,954 | $60,649 |
| NM | $66,750 | $53,817 | $59,541 |
| UT | $72,380 | $56,528 | $59,502 |
| NH | $76,320 | $62,521 | $59,349 |
| NJ | $83,770 | $64,616 | $59,344 |
| MD | $78,320 | $60,572 | $58,261 |
| ND | $61,500 | $51,595 | $58,252 |
| VA | $75,580 | $58,415 | $57,981 |
| AR | $61,780 | $49,993 | $57,790 |
| WY | $62,570 | $52,455 | $57,739 |
| NY | $79,820 | $61,270 | $56,929 |
| MN | $71,650 | $55,887 | $56,786 |
| CO | $72,750 | $57,517 | $56,733 |
| LA | $61,300 | $49,982 | $56,576 |
| NE | $63,180 | $50,774 | $56,181 |
| TN | $61,700 | $51,756 | $55,943 |
| NV | $64,510 | $54,014 | $55,696 |
| TX | $64,610 | $54,094 | $55,667 |
| CA | $80,620 | $62,141 | $55,196 |
| OR | $78,380 | $57,662 | $55,063 |
| KY | $61,130 | $49,276 | $54,468 |
| SD | $56,070 | $47,232 | $53,615 |
| OK | $58,800 | $47,280 | $53,554 |
| MS | $57,910 | $46,486 | $53,254 |
| ID | $60,510 | $48,446 | $52,990 |
| IA | $57,660 | $46,931 | $52,869 |
| AL | $59,470 | $47,403 | $52,688 |
| MO | $59,300 | $47,978 | $52,285 |
| WV | $57,760 | $46,819 | $52,153 |
| KS | $58,300 | $46,059 | $51,197 |
| AZ | $62,980 | $51,612 | $51,048 |
| NC | $58,600 | $47,436 | $50,389 |
| FL | $62,140 | $52,109 | $50,371 |
| IN | $56,390 | $45,855 | $49,743 |
| MT | $55,190 | $44,688 | $49,519 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $66,270, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- 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, Washington keeps the most at $80,010.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Montana, on $49,519.
- These are distribution medians for career/technical education teachers, secondary school, with a national value of $66,270. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- The household modeled for career/technical education teachers, secondary school 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 Washington retains the most, $80,010. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for career/technical education teachers, secondary school rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Montana anchors the distribution at $49,519. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.