In the 2021–22 school year, the average salary for a K-12 teacher was $66,397. But after adjusting for differences in the cost of living across the country, patterns emerge about where teachers are more highly compensated.
A cost-of-living adjustment is a compensation increase or decrease based on the differing costs of goods and services across states. In other words, teachers in high-cost areas receive higher salaries to maintain their standard of living, while those in lower-cost areas may receive lower adjustments.
For this article, USAFacts applied each state’s 2022 regional price parity to the average teacher salary in each state to get a better comparison of teacher wages.
For example, if a teacher in Virginia and Iowa each make around $59,000 per year, that money would go further in Iowa because Virginia has a higher cost of living. If these salaries were adjusted to compensate for the different costs of living, the teacher in Iowa would make closer to $66,000 and the Virginia teacher would make closer to $58,000.
When considering cost of living adjustments, New York and Massachusetts K-12 teachers are compensated more than teachers in the rest of the country. Adjusted teacher pay is the lowest in Florida.
How does teacher pay differ by state?
For the 2021–22 school year, the nation’s average cost-of-living-adjusted K-12 public teacher salary was $64,300. Nineteen states and Washington, DC, paid higher than this national average and 31 states paid less.
Florida had the lowest average adjusted salary at $50,508.
Florida was an outlier compared to other states that pay lower teacher salaries. In the next three states with adjusted salaries close to Florida – Mississippi, South Dakota, and West Virginia – the average teacher salary was within $600 of $55,000, or nearly $5000 more than the average Florida teacher salary.
More than a third of states paid teachers an adjusted average of less than $60,000 per year.
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Meanwhile, New York paid the highest teacher salary — $84,218 — when adjusted for cost of living. Massachusetts was second highest, with an average teacher salary of $83,434. This pair was separated by nearly $5,000 from the third-highest teacher salary: $79,125 in Connecticut.
Hawaii’s teacher salary was the most impacted by the cost-of-living adjustment. Hawaii’s unadjusted teacher salary is the 15th highest in the nation, but 35th when taking cost of living into account. Its unadjusted teacher salary of $67,000 is much more difficult to live on compared to a state with a similar nominal teacher salary, such as Minnesota, where the average unadjusted teacher salary is $68,491.
How does teacher pay compare to other college-educated jobs?
Teachers typically need to earn a four-year bachelor’s degree to work as a K-12 educator. Nationwide, more than half of teachers also have a master’s degree. In 48 states and Washington, DC, teachers generally earn less than the average salary for other workers with a bachelor's or master’s degree.
In two states — New York and Rhode Island — the average unadjusted teacher salary is higher than the average salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree, also not adjusted for cost of living.
Salaries are unadjusted for this comparison because nationwide adjustments aren’t needed for salaries within the same state.
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