Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: California, at $127,680. Tax does not change that. Best off: Delaware, at $89,557 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- California's $127,680 median for sociology teachers, postsecondary survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Delaware takes the top position at $89,557. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$84,290
People doing it
11,850
Highest paid
$127,680
CA
Best off, really
$89,557
DE, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,930
Highest tenth
$160,140
Lowest, really
$51,404
FL
States with data
46
National average
$96,980
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 $51,404 to $89,557.
- Just 11,850 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 46 jurisdictions have a figure, with $84,290 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in sociology 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 $51,404 to $89,557 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 11,850 are employed nationally in sociology teachers, postsecondary — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 46 jurisdictions carry a published median for sociology teachers, postsecondary. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,930 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $84,290 |
| Top tenth earn over | $160,140 |
| This salary | $84,290 |
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 Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$84,290around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,930 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $84,290 |
| Top tenth | $160,140 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Kentucky · $61,260 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $127,680 |
| Spread | $66,420 |
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 | $81,220 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $83,581 |
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 | $123,710 | $88,888 | $89,557 |
| NH | $112,890 | $88,248 | $83,771 |
| MI | $102,870 | $77,078 | $81,837 |
| CA | $127,680 | $90,753 | $80,611 |
| UT | $99,350 | $74,302 | $78,211 |
| PA | $99,660 | $75,881 | $77,827 |
| LA | $83,700 | $65,588 | $74,241 |
| CT | $101,490 | $75,389 | $72,707 |
| NV | $87,480 | $70,372 | $72,564 |
| IA | $81,910 | $63,953 | $72,046 |
| ID | $84,140 | $64,416 | $70,458 |
| WI | $84,960 | $65,010 | $69,831 |
| MD | $95,980 | $72,157 | $69,405 |
| VT | $87,620 | $66,798 | $69,124 |
| OH | $79,690 | $63,417 | $69,072 |
| OR | $101,960 | $72,188 | $68,933 |
| TN | $77,370 | $63,260 | $68,378 |
| DC | $103,160 | $75,603 | $68,231 |
| IN | $79,880 | $62,699 | $68,015 |
| TX | $81,220 | $65,968 | $67,886 |
| NY | $97,540 | $72,735 | $67,581 |
| NM | $77,740 | $61,032 | $67,524 |
| WV | $77,380 | $60,612 | $67,518 |
| MN | $87,340 | $65,858 | $66,917 |
| MA | $96,790 | $72,402 | $66,892 |
| GA | $84,330 | $64,547 | $66,750 |
| KS | $78,630 | $60,047 | $66,745 |
| MO | $77,800 | $60,843 | $66,305 |
| NE | $76,230 | $59,693 | $66,049 |
| MT | $75,880 | $59,285 | $65,694 |
| SC | $78,410 | $61,108 | $65,583 |
| MS | $70,860 | $55,938 | $64,081 |
| AL | $73,670 | $57,507 | $63,918 |
| NC | $76,430 | $60,058 | $63,797 |
| IL | $82,610 | $63,002 | $63,731 |
| WA | $83,140 | $67,319 | $62,010 |
| AZ | $78,430 | $62,447 | $61,765 |
| SD | $64,210 | $53,773 | $61,039 |
| CO | $78,630 | $61,395 | $60,558 |
| ME | $76,010 | $58,492 | $60,241 |
| VA | $78,120 | $60,056 | $59,610 |
| OK | $64,900 | $51,907 | $58,794 |
| AR | $62,390 | $50,461 | $58,330 |
| NJ | $78,350 | $61,148 | $56,160 |
| KY | $61,260 | $49,376 | $54,578 |
| FL | $63,470 | $53,178 | $51,404 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $84,290, 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.
- 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 California, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $90,753.
- The price adjustment for this job 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 — Florida anchors the bottom at $51,404. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for sociology teachers, postsecondary, with a national value of $84,290. 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.
- Take-home calculations for sociology teachers, postsecondary 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 $90,753, in California. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for sociology teachers, postsecondary 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.