Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Hawaii pays this job best, at $129,530. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $84,154 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary is also the real leader: Hawaii at $129,530, holding through tax and through price deflation to $84,154. 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
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
$80,250
People doing it
77,960
Highest paid
$129,530
HI
Best off, really
$84,154
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,800
Highest tenth
$129,500
Lowest, really
$54,869
OR
States with data
51
National average
$86,410
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $54,869 to $84,154.
- Just 77,960 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $80,250, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $54,869 to $84,154 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 77,960 are employed nationally in nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $80,250 |
| Top tenth earn over | $129,500 |
| This salary | $80,250 |
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 Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$80,250around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $80,250 |
| Top tenth | $129,500 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $62,210 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $129,530 |
| Spread | $67,320 |
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 | $84,930 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $87,399 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $129,530 | $91,398 | $84,154 |
| NV | $96,500 | $76,718 | $79,107 |
| ID | $90,890 | $68,807 | $75,261 |
| ND | $80,710 | $65,295 | $73,720 |
| DE | $98,170 | $72,644 | $73,191 |
| LA | $79,960 | $63,069 | $71,390 |
| DC | $107,770 | $78,454 | $70,805 |
| NE | $82,720 | $63,963 | $70,775 |
| TX | $84,930 | $68,578 | $70,572 |
| TN | $80,050 | $65,145 | $70,416 |
| WI | $84,700 | $64,843 | $69,651 |
| CT | $95,500 | $71,512 | $68,968 |
| NM | $79,380 | $62,109 | $68,715 |
| IA | $77,360 | $60,925 | $68,635 |
| AL | $79,690 | $61,508 | $68,364 |
| AK | $85,650 | $69,085 | $67,920 |
| MS | $75,060 | $58,724 | $67,273 |
| MT | $77,980 | $60,644 | $67,200 |
| OH | $76,700 | $61,396 | $66,871 |
| NC | $80,400 | $62,692 | $66,595 |
| UT | $82,320 | $63,079 | $66,397 |
| SC | $79,540 | $61,828 | $66,356 |
| WY | $72,590 | $59,897 | $65,931 |
| MO | $76,340 | $59,885 | $65,261 |
| IN | $76,080 | $60,137 | $65,236 |
| MI | $78,870 | $61,214 | $64,994 |
| FL | $82,410 | $66,805 | $64,576 |
| SD | $66,630 | $55,704 | $63,232 |
| PA | $78,460 | $61,618 | $63,198 |
| CO | $82,530 | $63,967 | $63,095 |
| KY | $71,920 | $57,026 | $63,035 |
| MN | $81,280 | $62,007 | $63,004 |
| ME | $79,600 | $60,776 | $62,593 |
| VA | $82,550 | $62,918 | $62,450 |
| GA | $77,720 | $60,227 | $62,283 |
| AZ | $78,980 | $62,820 | $62,134 |
| MD | $84,050 | $64,330 | $61,877 |
| IL | $79,150 | $60,739 | $61,442 |
| OK | $67,840 | $54,003 | $61,168 |
| WA | $81,630 | $66,257 | $61,031 |
| NH | $78,310 | $63,921 | $60,678 |
| RI | $78,340 | $61,424 | $60,569 |
| MA | $85,130 | $64,782 | $59,852 |
| AR | $63,090 | $50,997 | $58,951 |
| NY | $82,950 | $63,303 | $58,818 |
| WV | $62,210 | $50,206 | $55,926 |
| CA | $81,960 | $62,959 | $55,923 |
| NJ | $76,980 | $60,272 | $55,355 |
| VT | $66,660 | $53,436 | $55,297 |
| KS | $62,870 | $49,476 | $54,995 |
| OR | $78,050 | $57,459 | $54,869 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $80,250 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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, Hawaii keeps the most at $91,398.
- 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 Oregon, on $54,869.
- All wage figures for nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $80,250. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for nursing instructors and 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 Hawaii retains the most, $91,398. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for nursing instructors and 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; Oregon anchors the distribution at $54,869. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.