Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education
What the pay figures show
- Washington comes first for this job on every measure. $99,960 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $72,909 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For kindergarten teachers, except special education, Washington's $99,960 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $72,909. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,680
People doing it
108,870
Highest paid
$99,960
WA
Best off, really
$72,909
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$46,990
Highest tenth
$101,830
Lowest, really
$38,944
HI
States with data
50
National average
$69,370
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $38,944 to $72,909.
- Roughly 108,870 people hold this job nationally, earning $62,680 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $62,680 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Washington tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in kindergarten teachers, except special education pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $38,944 to $72,909, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- 108,870 are employed nationally in kindergarten teachers, except special education, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for kindergarten teachers, except special education. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $46,990 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,680 |
| Top tenth earn over | $101,830 |
| This salary | $62,680 |
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 Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education
The national median for this job
$62,680around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $46,990 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,680 |
| Top tenth | $101,830 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Montana · $47,590 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $99,960 |
| Spread | $52,370 |
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 | $63,780 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $65,634 |
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 | $99,960 | $79,152 | $72,909 |
| CT | $90,030 | $67,964 | $65,546 |
| RI | $85,470 | $66,173 | $65,252 |
| NM | $74,380 | $58,826 | $65,083 |
| OH | $72,570 | $58,604 | $63,830 |
| MN | $75,500 | $58,334 | $59,272 |
| MA | $84,100 | $64,109 | $59,230 |
| DE | $74,030 | $57,255 | $57,686 |
| MD | $75,910 | $58,991 | $56,741 |
| ND | $59,420 | $49,924 | $56,365 |
| WY | $60,990 | $51,185 | $56,342 |
| CA | $82,550 | $63,319 | $56,243 |
| DC | $81,500 | $62,206 | $56,141 |
| NV | $64,930 | $54,351 | $56,044 |
| NY | $77,630 | $59,848 | $55,607 |
| NE | $62,200 | $50,031 | $55,359 |
| TX | $63,780 | $53,427 | $54,980 |
| ID | $62,240 | $49,744 | $54,410 |
| GA | $65,680 | $52,275 | $54,060 |
| KY | $60,280 | $48,623 | $53,746 |
| MI | $63,300 | $50,602 | $53,727 |
| NJ | $74,210 | $58,484 | $53,713 |
| IA | $58,420 | $47,512 | $53,525 |
| PA | $64,430 | $51,972 | $53,304 |
| WV | $58,790 | $47,603 | $53,026 |
| SC | $60,890 | $49,384 | $53,000 |
| TN | $58,070 | $48,839 | $52,791 |
| UT | $63,190 | $50,141 | $52,779 |
| VT | $63,280 | $50,959 | $52,734 |
| WI | $59,350 | $47,796 | $51,340 |
| IN | $58,250 | $47,295 | $51,305 |
| IL | $64,020 | $50,596 | $51,182 |
| VA | $63,920 | $50,625 | $50,249 |
| MO | $56,590 | $45,928 | $50,051 |
| CO | $62,870 | $50,638 | $49,948 |
| KS | $56,670 | $44,841 | $49,842 |
| LA | $53,130 | $43,662 | $49,422 |
| OR | $68,580 | $51,625 | $49,298 |
| AR | $52,060 | $42,543 | $49,178 |
| NH | $60,240 | $50,583 | $48,016 |
| SD | $49,410 | $41,881 | $47,541 |
| FL | $58,100 | $48,863 | $47,233 |
| NC | $53,180 | $43,297 | $45,993 |
| AL | $50,900 | $40,895 | $45,454 |
| MS | $48,880 | $39,592 | $45,356 |
| OK | $47,860 | $38,982 | $44,155 |
| ME | $52,660 | $42,258 | $43,521 |
| AZ | $52,830 | $43,711 | $43,233 |
| MT | $47,590 | $38,939 | $43,148 |
| HI | $53,160 | $42,297 | $38,944 |
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 $62,680.
- 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 Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $79,152.
- 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 $38,944.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for kindergarten teachers, except special education, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $62,680, 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 kindergarten teachers, except special education 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 $79,152, in Washington. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to kindergarten teachers, except special education 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 $38,944. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $38,944 — and the two source series are dated independently.