English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. California pays this job best, at $130,490. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $82,085 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for english language and literature teachers, postsecondary is also the real leader: California at $130,490, holding through tax and through price deflation to $82,085. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$78,760
People doing it
57,720
Highest paid
$130,490
CA
Best off, really
$82,085
CA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,270
Highest tenth
$137,250
Lowest, really
$48,507
FL
States with data
49
National average
$89,580
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
112.58%
CA, 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 $48,507 up to $82,085.
- Only 57,720 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $78,760 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- The nominal spread for english language and literature teachers, postsecondary approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $48,507 to $82,085, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in english language and literature teachers, postsecondary is 57,720. ⚠️ 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.
- Coverage for english language and literature teachers, postsecondary runs to 49 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: English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,270 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $78,760 |
| Top tenth earn over | $137,250 |
| This salary | $78,760 |
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 English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$78,760around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,270 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $78,760 |
| Top tenth | $137,250 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $53,200 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $130,490 |
| Spread | $77,290 |
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 | $78,900 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $81,194 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | $130,490 | $92,412 | $82,085 |
| NH | $98,650 | $78,230 | $74,261 |
| MI | $90,240 | $68,729 | $72,974 |
| DE | $97,100 | $71,962 | $72,504 |
| NV | $85,830 | $69,211 | $71,367 |
| IA | $79,720 | $62,495 | $70,404 |
| CT | $97,310 | $72,686 | $70,100 |
| VT | $86,870 | $66,320 | $68,629 |
| NE | $78,450 | $61,154 | $67,666 |
| WI | $80,800 | $62,331 | $66,953 |
| TX | $78,900 | $64,336 | $66,206 |
| AK | $82,770 | $67,059 | $65,928 |
| ME | $84,290 | $63,744 | $65,649 |
| MN | $84,200 | $63,862 | $64,890 |
| PA | $80,670 | $63,105 | $64,723 |
| MT | $73,160 | $57,525 | $63,744 |
| OR | $91,870 | $65,972 | $62,998 |
| MO | $73,070 | $57,738 | $62,921 |
| MD | $83,760 | $64,140 | $61,694 |
| RI | $79,190 | $61,991 | $61,127 |
| AZ | $76,990 | $61,470 | $60,798 |
| IL | $77,570 | $59,706 | $60,397 |
| ND | $63,690 | $53,355 | $60,239 |
| IN | $69,180 | $55,487 | $60,191 |
| UT | $73,280 | $57,122 | $60,127 |
| NY | $84,850 | $64,537 | $59,964 |
| SD | $62,960 | $52,768 | $59,899 |
| WA | $79,840 | $64,997 | $59,871 |
| NM | $66,450 | $53,615 | $59,318 |
| MA | $83,980 | $64,031 | $59,158 |
| OH | $65,140 | $53,445 | $58,211 |
| TN | $64,220 | $53,781 | $58,132 |
| KY | $65,090 | $52,319 | $57,832 |
| WY | $62,030 | $52,021 | $57,262 |
| CO | $72,910 | $57,623 | $56,837 |
| WV | $63,280 | $51,016 | $56,829 |
| DC | $82,300 | $62,701 | $56,587 |
| NJ | $78,760 | $61,411 | $56,401 |
| SC | $64,470 | $52,023 | $55,832 |
| LA | $60,350 | $49,247 | $55,744 |
| MS | $60,680 | $48,601 | $55,677 |
| AL | $62,910 | $50,016 | $55,592 |
| KS | $62,340 | $49,080 | $54,555 |
| NC | $63,370 | $51,078 | $54,258 |
| GA | $65,530 | $52,162 | $53,943 |
| AR | $56,520 | $45,961 | $53,129 |
| VA | $67,330 | $53,086 | $52,691 |
| OK | $53,200 | $43,033 | $48,742 |
| FL | $59,740 | $50,181 | $48,507 |
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 $78,760.
- 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 $92,412.
- 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 Florida, on $48,507.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for english language and literature teachers, postsecondary, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $78,760, 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.
- Take-home calculations for english language and literature 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 $92,412, 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 results for english language and literature teachers, postsecondary 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; Florida anchors the distribution at $48,507. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.