Self-Enrichment Teachers
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for self-enrichment teachers is the District of Columbia, at $66,430. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and South Dakota comes out ahead, worth $47,823. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for self-enrichment teachers: the District of Columbia leads at $66,430 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting South Dakota to $47,823 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$46,800
People doing it
332,110
Highest paid
$66,430
DC
Best off, really
$47,823
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,050
Highest tenth
$92,840
Lowest, really
$28,941
DE
States with data
51
National average
$54,740
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $28,941 to $47,823.
- 332,110 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $46,800. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $46,800 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in self-enrichment teachers 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 $28,941 to $47,823, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- National employment in self-enrichment teachers is 332,110 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report self-enrichment teachers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Self-Enrichment Teachers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,050 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $46,800 |
| Top tenth earn over | $92,840 |
| This salary | $46,800 |
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 Self-Enrichment Teachers
The national median for this job
$46,800around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,050 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $46,800 |
| Top tenth | $92,840 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Self-Enrichment Teachers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $30,810 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $66,430 |
| Spread | $35,620 |
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 | $36,140 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $37,191 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $49,720 | $42,130 | $47,823 |
| NH | $59,880 | $50,294 | $47,742 |
| DC | $66,430 | $52,685 | $47,548 |
| VT | $53,190 | $43,393 | $44,904 |
| WY | $46,640 | $39,655 | $43,650 |
| GA | $52,320 | $42,207 | $43,648 |
| NY | $57,790 | $46,091 | $42,825 |
| CT | $55,240 | $44,277 | $42,702 |
| NM | $45,890 | $38,047 | $42,094 |
| WV | $45,010 | $37,112 | $41,340 |
| NV | $47,020 | $39,961 | $41,205 |
| MT | $45,050 | $37,017 | $41,019 |
| NJ | $53,780 | $43,969 | $40,382 |
| MD | $51,630 | $41,576 | $39,990 |
| AK | $47,710 | $40,515 | $39,832 |
| OR | $53,790 | $41,244 | $39,384 |
| VA | $49,160 | $39,614 | $39,319 |
| ME | $46,720 | $37,886 | $39,019 |
| MO | $43,090 | $35,715 | $38,921 |
| HI | $51,960 | $41,422 | $38,139 |
| MN | $45,660 | $37,244 | $37,843 |
| FL | $45,830 | $39,004 | $37,703 |
| WA | $48,020 | $40,764 | $37,549 |
| UT | $43,580 | $35,257 | $37,112 |
| KS | $41,290 | $33,341 | $37,060 |
| MA | $49,430 | $39,746 | $36,720 |
| NC | $41,710 | $34,538 | $36,689 |
| AZ | $44,110 | $36,922 | $36,519 |
| MS | $38,770 | $31,873 | $36,513 |
| KY | $39,990 | $33,030 | $36,510 |
| CO | $44,710 | $36,846 | $36,343 |
| CA | $49,570 | $40,843 | $36,279 |
| SC | $39,800 | $33,666 | $36,131 |
| IL | $44,230 | $35,674 | $36,087 |
| TN | $38,730 | $33,300 | $35,994 |
| LA | $37,760 | $31,774 | $35,965 |
| OK | $38,010 | $31,511 | $35,692 |
| PA | $41,740 | $34,437 | $35,320 |
| NE | $38,240 | $31,869 | $35,263 |
| MI | $40,350 | $33,137 | $35,183 |
| AL | $38,430 | $31,424 | $34,927 |
| OH | $37,360 | $31,888 | $34,732 |
| ND | $35,100 | $30,383 | $34,303 |
| RI | $41,960 | $34,741 | $34,258 |
| IA | $35,670 | $30,097 | $33,906 |
| WI | $37,820 | $31,557 | $33,897 |
| IN | $36,980 | $30,832 | $33,446 |
| ID | $36,490 | $30,419 | $33,272 |
| TX | $36,140 | $31,218 | $32,126 |
| AR | $30,810 | $26,254 | $30,349 |
| DE | $34,730 | $28,725 | $28,941 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for self-enrichment teachers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $46,800, 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 self-enrichment teachers, 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 the District of Columbia, at $52,685.
- The price adjustment for self-enrichment teachers uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Delaware anchors the bottom at $28,941. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for self-enrichment teachers, with a national value of $46,800. 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 self-enrichment teachers 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 $52,685, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms figures for self-enrichment teachers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.