Each year the National Educators Association (NEA) publishes the list of average teacher salaries by state and then ranks them highest to lowest, presumably to show the states that invest in teacher salaries. You can see the top states listed below:

As I was pondering these numbers, I saw that Florida was at the bottom, ranked 50 before West Virginia, and California was at the top with a WHOPPING $95,000 average salary. However, having lived in both of those states, I personally experienced California’s very high income tax, while Florida has none. It occurred to me that this might look different while adjusting for mandatory tax burdens imposed in each state.

Tax Burdens

Each state sets it’s own tax brackets for income taxes. State income tax data was downloaded from the Federation of Tax Administrators for comparisons. Income tax percentages range in each state from 1.95% in North Dakota to over 9% in California. And a few states (Washington, Wyoming, Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, Nevada, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Florida) have no income taxes. States taking more than 5% are listed below:

The list of average teacher salaries was then analyzed reducing salaries by the states mandated income tax burden. Just making this minor adjustment already changed the landscape for what teacher ACTUALY earn in each state.

Adjusting for taxes alone caused the states of Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon, Alaska to fall below the national average and no longer appear in the top paying states. This led me to one additional consideration: consumer pricing index. We all know that it costs more to live in certain states than others. Is it possible that the cost of living in Hawaii is so exorbitant that NO SALARY provides a basic living wage? I had to consider this possibility.

Cost of Living

The Bureau of Labor Statistics had just what I needed. I downloaded the Consumer pricing index to see what the cost of living was for each state based upon the national average. It is not coincidental that the highest teacher salaries correspond to the states with the highest cost of living. But did they earn enough to compensate for the higher cost of living?

To determine salaries weighted against inflationary figures, I applied the real wage conversion: Real Wage in a year = (Nominal Wage in a Year/CPI in a Year)x100. When this is applied to the average teacher salary, significant changes are seen.

Number 1 ranked California drops to number 17. Number 3 ranked Massachusetts drops below the National average to rank 30. And Hawaii comes in dead last as the lowest paying state in the nation. The table below shows all states after adjusting for tax burden and CPI. More significantly, low reporting states like Tennessee (44), Oklahoma (43), Nebraska (34), Alabama (31), Texas (30), Idaho (28), and Wisconsin (25) ALL move above the average for the nation for a good showing in the TOP 25 states! While Florida (47), Montana (48), Maine (49), Idaho (50), and Hawaii (51) bring up the rear as the LOWEST paying states in the nation.

The Truth About Teacher Salaries

Teachers work in very specific economic contexts. Any unilateral presentation of teacher salary data necessitates a contextual analysis of that data. Any other view is nothing more than misrepresentation. Most Americans do not recognize that cost of living can swing so wildly and that taxes are not static. The below data shows the reality of teacher salaries in the United States.