Postsecondary Teachers, All Other
What the pay figures show
- Delaware pays this job the most, at $101,070. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $75,054 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Delaware leads for postsecondary teachers, all other at $101,070 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $75,054 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$77,640
People doing it
149,840
Highest paid
$101,070
DE
Best off, really
$75,054
DE, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,300
Highest tenth
$160,700
Lowest, really
$36,637
HI
States with data
48
National average
$90,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
99.25%
DE, 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 $36,637 to $75,054.
- About 149,840 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $77,640. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 48 jurisdictions, averaging $77,640 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Delaware leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in postsecondary teachers, all other 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 $36,637 to $75,054 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 149,840 workers, postsecondary teachers, all other sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for postsecondary teachers, all other 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: Postsecondary Teachers, All Other
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,300 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $77,640 |
| Top tenth earn over | $160,700 |
| This salary | $77,640 |
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 Postsecondary Teachers, All Other
The national median for this job
$77,640around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,300 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $77,640 |
| Top tenth | $160,700 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Postsecondary Teachers, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Wyoming · $46,710 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Delaware · $101,070 |
| Spread | $54,360 |
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 | $64,110 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $65,974 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DE | $101,070 | $74,493 | $75,054 |
| OK | $84,550 | $65,007 | $73,632 |
| LA | $78,810 | $62,295 | $70,513 |
| NM | $78,840 | $61,754 | $68,323 |
| TN | $76,480 | $62,634 | $67,701 |
| MT | $77,550 | $60,366 | $66,892 |
| OH | $75,680 | $60,706 | $66,120 |
| CA | $100,690 | $74,393 | $66,080 |
| WI | $79,120 | $61,249 | $65,790 |
| MA | $94,480 | $70,893 | $65,497 |
| IN | $76,390 | $60,346 | $65,463 |
| SC | $77,940 | $60,809 | $65,262 |
| MN | $84,280 | $63,913 | $64,941 |
| KS | $75,790 | $58,208 | $64,700 |
| IA | $71,680 | $57,145 | $64,376 |
| CO | $83,210 | $64,415 | $63,537 |
| VA | $84,060 | $63,893 | $63,418 |
| ID | $74,180 | $57,937 | $63,371 |
| NC | $74,240 | $58,604 | $62,253 |
| NH | $79,980 | $65,096 | $61,793 |
| MD | $82,850 | $63,543 | $61,120 |
| AZ | $76,700 | $61,273 | $60,604 |
| NJ | $85,260 | $65,569 | $60,220 |
| ND | $63,430 | $53,146 | $60,003 |
| KY | $67,690 | $54,198 | $59,909 |
| WA | $78,940 | $64,364 | $59,288 |
| MI | $70,550 | $55,714 | $59,155 |
| WV | $65,260 | $52,517 | $58,500 |
| CT | $78,220 | $60,306 | $58,160 |
| TX | $64,110 | $53,692 | $55,253 |
| DC | $78,890 | $60,592 | $54,684 |
| MO | $61,860 | $49,914 | $54,396 |
| PA | $65,400 | $52,721 | $54,073 |
| GA | $64,650 | $51,499 | $53,257 |
| OR | $72,440 | $54,003 | $51,569 |
| AR | $54,620 | $44,505 | $51,446 |
| NV | $59,270 | $49,803 | $51,354 |
| UT | $61,370 | $48,760 | $51,325 |
| FL | $62,670 | $52,535 | $50,782 |
| NY | $67,640 | $53,359 | $49,578 |
| VT | $59,010 | $47,810 | $49,475 |
| ME | $59,950 | $47,623 | $49,047 |
| RI | $60,390 | $48,859 | $48,178 |
| IL | $59,590 | $47,256 | $47,803 |
| NE | $52,210 | $42,459 | $46,980 |
| AL | $51,060 | $41,016 | $45,589 |
| WY | $46,710 | $39,711 | $43,712 |
| HI | $49,730 | $39,791 | $36,637 |
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 $77,640.
- 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 Delaware, at $74,493.
- 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 Hawaii, on $36,637.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for postsecondary teachers, all other, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $77,640, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for postsecondary teachers, all other 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 $74,493, which leads in Delaware.
- Real-terms results for postsecondary teachers, all other 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $36,637. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.