Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays this job the most, at $102,670. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $74,665 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Washington leads for secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education at $102,670 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $74,665 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
$72,040
People doing it
1,065,210
Highest paid
$102,670
WA
Best off, really
$74,665
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,780
Highest tenth
$107,600
Lowest, really
$44,885
OK
States with data
51
National average
$76,320
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, 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 $44,885 to $74,665.
- Roughly 1,065,210 Americans do this job. Hold that scale in mind. A few thousand dollars here is a few thousand dollars across millions of households.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $72,040, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education 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 $44,885 to $74,665 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 1,065,210 workers nationally, secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education is one of the highest-headcount occupations BLS publishes. Aggregate effects of the differentials described above are correspondingly large, even where the per-worker figures appear modest.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $72,040 |
| Top tenth earn over | $107,600 |
| This salary | $72,040 |
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 Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
The national median for this job
$72,040around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $72,040 |
| Top tenth | $107,600 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $48,710 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $102,670 |
| Spread | $53,960 |
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 | $63,590 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $65,439 |
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 | $102,670 | $81,058 | $74,665 |
| RI | $92,610 | $70,928 | $69,941 |
| OH | $78,800 | $62,815 | $68,417 |
| NY | $97,070 | $72,432 | $67,300 |
| CA | $101,370 | $74,808 | $66,449 |
| NM | $75,900 | $59,824 | $66,187 |
| MA | $95,260 | $71,402 | $65,968 |
| AK | $79,650 | $64,864 | $63,770 |
| PA | $78,800 | $61,847 | $63,432 |
| UT | $76,330 | $59,131 | $62,242 |
| IL | $79,990 | $61,288 | $61,998 |
| VT | $76,220 | $59,531 | $61,604 |
| GA | $75,480 | $58,763 | $60,768 |
| DE | $77,960 | $59,761 | $60,210 |
| MN | $76,460 | $58,944 | $59,892 |
| CT | $80,970 | $62,089 | $59,880 |
| NH | $77,060 | $63,042 | $59,843 |
| MD | $78,670 | $60,801 | $58,482 |
| NJ | $82,200 | $63,612 | $58,422 |
| ND | $61,210 | $51,362 | $57,989 |
| WY | $62,690 | $52,551 | $57,845 |
| DC | $82,750 | $62,979 | $56,839 |
| CO | $72,900 | $57,616 | $56,831 |
| NV | $65,520 | $54,825 | $56,533 |
| NE | $63,450 | $50,979 | $56,407 |
| TN | $61,860 | $51,885 | $56,082 |
| MI | $66,030 | $52,680 | $55,933 |
| IA | $61,200 | $49,640 | $55,922 |
| AR | $59,660 | $48,368 | $55,912 |
| VA | $72,170 | $56,212 | $55,795 |
| OR | $79,570 | $58,395 | $55,763 |
| LA | $59,850 | $48,860 | $55,306 |
| KY | $61,560 | $49,606 | $54,833 |
| TX | $63,590 | $53,275 | $54,823 |
| AL | $61,990 | $49,317 | $54,815 |
| MT | $60,990 | $49,076 | $54,381 |
| IN | $61,880 | $50,105 | $54,353 |
| SC | $62,580 | $50,630 | $54,337 |
| WI | $62,870 | $50,418 | $54,157 |
| ID | $61,690 | $49,332 | $53,959 |
| ME | $64,880 | $51,252 | $52,784 |
| KS | $59,920 | $47,271 | $52,543 |
| HI | $74,310 | $56,903 | $52,392 |
| MO | $59,240 | $47,932 | $52,236 |
| WV | $56,610 | $45,943 | $51,178 |
| NC | $57,650 | $46,710 | $49,618 |
| SD | $51,050 | $43,199 | $49,036 |
| FL | $60,410 | $50,719 | $49,027 |
| AZ | $58,360 | $48,016 | $47,491 |
| MS | $50,980 | $41,195 | $47,192 |
| OK | $48,710 | $39,627 | $44,885 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $72,040, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- 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 Washington, at $81,058.
- 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 — Oklahoma sits at the bottom on $44,885.
- These are distribution medians for secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education, with a national value of $72,040. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education 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 $81,058, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical 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 Oklahoma at $44,885. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Oklahoma anchors the bottom at $44,885 — and the two source series are dated independently.