Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- California pays this job the most on paper: $137,280. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts New Hampshire in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and Louisiana wins at $106,342. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For engineering teachers, postsecondary, California's $137,280 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote New Hampshire; regional price parity then promotes Louisiana, whose $106,342 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$109,270
People doing it
40,270
Highest paid
$137,280
CA
Best off, really
$106,342
LA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$61,550
Highest tenth
$210,370
Lowest, really
$65,689
PA
States with data
48
National average
$124,520
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.34%
LA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $65,689 to $106,342. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- This is a small job: about 40,270 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 48 jurisdictions, averaging $109,270 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in engineering teachers, postsecondary is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $65,689 through $106,342. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- With 40,270 workers, engineering teachers, postsecondary is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- Coverage for engineering teachers, postsecondary runs to 48 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $61,550 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $109,270 |
| Top tenth earn over | $210,370 |
| This salary | $109,270 |
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 Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$109,270around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $61,550 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $109,270 |
| Top tenth | $210,370 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Pennsylvania · $82,070 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $137,280 |
| Spread | $55,210 |
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 | $123,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $126,864 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LA | $125,930 | $93,948 | $106,342 |
| MI | $127,230 | $93,071 | $98,818 |
| IL | $135,430 | $97,273 | $98,400 |
| TX | $123,280 | $95,528 | $98,305 |
| GA | $131,260 | $95,031 | $98,275 |
| ND | $109,710 | $85,131 | $96,115 |
| DE | $130,730 | $93,223 | $93,924 |
| NH | $127,070 | $98,118 | $93,140 |
| KS | $115,160 | $83,708 | $93,045 |
| KY | $110,810 | $83,024 | $91,772 |
| AR | $104,210 | $78,745 | $91,026 |
| ID | $112,240 | $82,695 | $90,452 |
| WY | $103,380 | $81,558 | $89,774 |
| MA | $134,850 | $97,013 | $89,630 |
| WI | $112,830 | $82,963 | $89,114 |
| IA | $103,360 | $78,228 | $88,127 |
| SD | $97,700 | $77,562 | $88,044 |
| VA | $121,880 | $88,324 | $87,667 |
| NM | $105,410 | $79,152 | $87,571 |
| NV | $107,890 | $84,731 | $87,369 |
| IN | $106,010 | $80,310 | $87,119 |
| CT | $124,350 | $90,048 | $86,845 |
| MS | $100,440 | $75,564 | $86,565 |
| TN | $100,640 | $79,630 | $86,073 |
| AL | $103,580 | $77,382 | $86,009 |
| WA | $119,960 | $93,222 | $85,870 |
| OH | $102,410 | $78,776 | $85,801 |
| CA | $137,280 | $96,422 | $85,647 |
| OK | $99,790 | $75,042 | $84,999 |
| AK | $109,600 | $85,934 | $84,485 |
| WV | $100,400 | $75,752 | $84,383 |
| MT | $101,170 | $75,648 | $83,826 |
| SC | $103,420 | $77,164 | $82,814 |
| MD | $117,200 | $85,970 | $82,691 |
| UT | $105,180 | $78,144 | $82,255 |
| AZ | $108,540 | $82,877 | $81,971 |
| MN | $108,390 | $79,235 | $80,510 |
| NE | $95,860 | $72,609 | $80,341 |
| VT | $104,110 | $77,311 | $80,003 |
| CO | $104,070 | $78,173 | $77,107 |
| RI | $102,690 | $77,547 | $76,467 |
| FL | $97,340 | $77,309 | $74,729 |
| NJ | $109,910 | $81,340 | $74,704 |
| NY | $106,240 | $78,342 | $72,791 |
| OR | $106,840 | $75,194 | $71,804 |
| ME | $88,750 | $66,562 | $68,552 |
| DC | $101,970 | $74,867 | $67,567 |
| PA | $82,070 | $64,047 | $65,689 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $109,270.
- 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, New Hampshire keeps the most at $98,118.
- 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 — Pennsylvania anchors the bottom at $65,689. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for engineering teachers, postsecondary, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $109,270, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for engineering 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 New Hampshire retains the most, $98,118. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for engineering 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.