Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: California, at $132,960. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $97,127 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- California's $132,960 median for chemistry teachers, postsecondary survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $97,127. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$93,250
People doing it
19,980
Highest paid
$132,960
CA
Best off, really
$97,127
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$57,870
Highest tenth
$172,110
Lowest, really
$58,069
NJ
States with data
48
National average
$105,210
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $58,069 up to $97,127.
- Only 19,980 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 48 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $93,250. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, California pays most.
- The nominal spread for chemistry teachers, postsecondary approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $58,069 to $97,127, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in chemistry teachers, postsecondary is 19,980. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for chemistry teachers, postsecondary in 48 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $57,870 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $93,250 |
| Top tenth earn over | $172,110 |
| This salary | $93,250 |
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 Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$93,250around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $57,870 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $93,250 |
| Top tenth | $172,110 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $64,450 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $132,960 |
| Spread | $68,510 |
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 | $81,810 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $84,188 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $111,020 | $86,027 | $97,127 |
| CA | $132,960 | $93,871 | $83,381 |
| NV | $101,640 | $80,334 | $82,835 |
| MI | $101,030 | $75,862 | $80,546 |
| UT | $102,110 | $76,120 | $80,125 |
| AZ | $103,790 | $79,654 | $78,783 |
| MN | $104,380 | $76,687 | $77,920 |
| KS | $93,830 | $69,892 | $77,688 |
| DE | $104,610 | $76,750 | $77,328 |
| NH | $102,220 | $80,742 | $76,645 |
| RI | $100,920 | $76,386 | $75,322 |
| PA | $95,070 | $72,793 | $74,660 |
| LA | $83,680 | $65,575 | $74,226 |
| WY | $82,830 | $67,101 | $73,861 |
| MA | $108,270 | $79,904 | $73,823 |
| IL | $97,860 | $72,975 | $73,820 |
| NM | $85,240 | $65,950 | $72,965 |
| MD | $101,530 | $75,721 | $72,833 |
| NE | $85,050 | $65,496 | $72,471 |
| CO | $96,600 | $73,246 | $72,248 |
| IA | $82,050 | $64,046 | $72,151 |
| MT | $84,680 | $64,979 | $72,004 |
| KY | $82,550 | $64,132 | $70,889 |
| WV | $81,830 | $63,539 | $70,778 |
| SD | $75,810 | $62,162 | $70,563 |
| MO | $83,000 | $64,257 | $70,026 |
| TN | $79,150 | $64,512 | $69,731 |
| IN | $81,530 | $63,811 | $69,221 |
| NY | $99,880 | $74,243 | $68,982 |
| WI | $83,480 | $64,057 | $68,807 |
| OR | $101,350 | $71,812 | $68,574 |
| DC | $103,370 | $75,733 | $68,348 |
| TX | $81,810 | $66,383 | $68,313 |
| OH | $77,910 | $62,214 | $67,762 |
| SC | $81,200 | $62,886 | $67,491 |
| GA | $85,300 | $65,181 | $67,406 |
| ME | $85,250 | $64,350 | $66,274 |
| AL | $76,430 | $59,341 | $65,957 |
| NC | $78,620 | $61,511 | $65,341 |
| WA | $85,970 | $69,310 | $63,844 |
| VT | $78,560 | $61,022 | $63,147 |
| FL | $77,630 | $63,443 | $61,326 |
| VA | $80,330 | $61,484 | $61,027 |
| MS | $66,420 | $52,984 | $60,697 |
| AR | $64,720 | $52,246 | $60,395 |
| CT | $78,820 | $60,695 | $58,535 |
| OK | $64,450 | $51,566 | $58,408 |
| NJ | $81,600 | $63,228 | $58,069 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $93,250, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $93,871.
- 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 — New Jersey sits at the bottom on $58,069.
- These are distribution medians for chemistry teachers, postsecondary, with a national value of $93,250. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for chemistry teachers, postsecondary model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $93,871, which leads in California.
- The price deflation applied to chemistry 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 New Jersey at $58,069. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Jersey anchors the bottom at $58,069 — and the two source series are dated independently.