Let’s discuss the latest BLS report on employer costs with a special focus on teachers.
Employer Cost Synopsis
- Government Wages Plus Benefits: $61.27
- Private Wages and Benefits: $43.78
- Government Wages: $37.90
- Private Wages: $30.76
Government hourly wages are 23.2 percent more than private workers on average.
Benefits are the real killer.
Government total compensation is 39.9 percent more than private workers.
What About Teachers?
Teachers make $52.29 per hour in direct wages. But they make a whopping $79.38 per hour in total benefits.
Benefits for teachers are an addition 52 percent of wages.
Economic Fairness
Education Week reports Biden Calls for Teacher Pay Raises, Expanded Pre-K in State of the Union
Biden called on lawmakers Thursday to “give every child a good start by providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds,” but he did not detail a specific plan to pay for universal pre-kindergarten, which he has called for in the past and included in his Build Back Better proposal that never passed the Senate.
Biden’s call for giving public school teachers a raise also included no specifics. It was included in a portion of the address focused on economic fairness, which included a push to raise taxes on the highest income earners to help cover the costs of domestic policy priorities.
There’s no better place to start when it comes to deserving teachers than the city of Chicago.
And Who Will Pay?
Chicago Teachers’ Union Seeks $50 Billion Despite $700 Million City Deficit
On March 13, I commented Chicago Teachers’ Union Seeks $50 Billion Despite $700 Million City Deficit
“Stop asking that question,” she said. “Ask another question.”
This is in a city, mind you, that already spends an astonishing $29,000 per student, including all sources and money for the capital budget. And Chicago Public Schools already faces a $391 million deficit for next and nearly $700 million for the following year when “Covid relief” money will have run out.
The only way to stop this behavior is to eliminate the public unions, totally.
Unfortunately, a corrupt Chicago mayor is in bed with the corrupt CTU. And the state is the most gerrymandered state in the nation. Springfield is in on the act.
What Are the Odds Police Show Up?
On July 2, I noted In Chicago There’s Under a 50 Percent Chance Police Show Up If You are Shot
Good luck in Chicago getting the police to show up if you are shot, stabbed, a victim of domestic violence, or any number of other serious crimes.
Don’t worry. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson will fix the problem by hiking property taxes to give money to the Teachers’ Union.
And instead of going anything about crime, Johnson Seeks Slave Reparations.
Public Unions Have No Business Existing: Even FDR Admitted That
To understand why public unions should never exist, please see Public Unions Have No Business Existing: Even FDR Admitted That
Chicago has an amazing propensity to keep electing mayors worse than the last one. Brandon Johnson is the worst Chicago mayor ever.
In Illinois, as in California, there is really only one thing sensible you can do about this setup. Leave.
Correction
The chart and calculation for teachers’ total benefits was correct but the wage line was incorrect as initially reported. I originally posted that teachers make $37.90 in direct wages.
Teachers make $52.29 per hour in direct wages. But they make a whopping $79.38 per hour in total benefits, as previously reported
Benefits for teachers are an addition 52 percent of wages.
Thanks to those who reported the error.
Correction
The chart and calculation for teachers’ total benefits was correct but the wage line was incorrect as initially reported. I originally posted that teachers make $37.90 in direct wages.
Teachers make $52.29 per hour in direct wages. But they make a whopping $79.38 per hour in total benefits, as previously reported
Benefits for teachers are an addition 52 percent of wages.
Thanks to those who reported the error.
Regarding Teacher Salaries
I did not get the data off Fred
It is from a Beta BLS data download.
The BLS just modified the site and the Excel files are now corrupted.
I notified the BLS
Will get to the chart once I have access to the data
Thanks to those who caught an error
I was able to get the data in CSV format.
http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/68bb987f364e44eb8b8f153f956bf5b3
It’s not easy finding or downloading this stuff.
Note: there are multiple series in that link
But What I want is not on Fred.
With that link I was able to fix the chart – coming up shortly
Thanks
Overpaid teachers who don’t educate, overpaid police who don’t protect anyone, overpaid firefighters who spend most of their time at the station or doing PR appearances for the 5 o’clock news. None of this is affordable or sustainable. When I pointed these things out to a California police detective friend making $100K in retirement he had no answer except to become angry and declare, “we have a contract!”
Sorry kids, but you can’t get blood out of a turnip. It all has to end, one day.
What do you expect firefighters to do when there is no emergency? Should they be picking up trash on the highways?
In the old days Gov workers were underpaid. In exchange they received a more secure job. The last great Federal layoff was under Eisenhower. Many of the people I worked with went to Aerospace in CA at the time. Twenty years later when Apollo ended and Aerospace started to layoff they went back to work for the Federal Government. You also got a better vacation plan. Initially you received 13 days vacation (called Annual Leave) a year and it would go up to 5 weeks after 20 years. Plus you could save up to 6 weeks a year from year to year. Which would convert to cash when you retired. Also usually a better choices in health plans over private businesses. And you didn’t pay into Social Security. On the other hand OT was capped at a low rate if you weren’t union.
There were at the time double and triple dippers. They would work for the Federal Government, retire at 55, then work in private industry or sometimes for a State Government. You could receive a Federal retirement check, Social Security and a private retirement check (if you worked for a company that has a plan) and sometimes a State Government retirement.
It’s all very different now. In many cases starting in the 80’s Federal wages took a very large leap upwards. On the other hand they all pay into Social Security. All the states do too. I believe Alaska and possibly Oregon was the last states that excluded their employees from the Social Security system. I think some private industries now have better health plans also. Also the Federal Government started to reduce your Federal retirement if also took Social Security.
Teachers use to be low paid but they basically only worked 9 months a year. Long holidays and some had outside jobs. Also many were married woman or lived at home with their parents so were not the primary bread winners. That’s all changed. The pay is much better, though they still only work 9 months a year. But then so do the Supreme Court Justices and Congress even less.
I guess there are wild differences in locations and circumstances. I’m a newbie teacher going into my fourth year. I still don’t earn as much as my previous desk job, but I had to pay for training costs out of pocket and am expected to pay for a Masters degree in order to get tenure. I was always under the impression that one works to get paid, not having to pay to work. But then, what do I know? I’m just a teacher. I cannot join the union because their dues are currently 5% of my pay. But New Haven is a super-blue sanctuary city with most of its money going to an ever inflating education budget. Nobody seems to know where the money’s going, but I suspect its the admins vacuuming it up. There are never enough leaders even as classrooms are desperate for teachers to fill in the empty spaces — nobody wants to go here because every other town in the state pays better. Some of the maxed-out tenured teachers get paid a pretty sum, though. I see a fleet of brand new Mercedes and Range Rovers outside the building. As for those who remark on the work time of teachers, I can easily say I have never worked so hard in my life for so little. It may be four hours of teaching time, but its thoroughly draining and doesn’t include the vast amount of auxiliary work involving class prep, grading management, parent follow-up, and endless student drama. Burnout is the norm. It simply is. No shiny Mercedes makes up for the colossal stress.
Why does teaching K-12 require a masters degree?
Think that figure varies drastically by state. Huge issue for teachers is they can’t relocate or they lose tenure and almost start at bottom of pay scale. My wife teaches in AZ, and pretty sure benefit value is not close to benefit value you noted.
Yes – It is the big BLUE cities driving that data
Some teachers do deserve a raise
Could we have an article on the taxpayer drain and fuel for inflation from the bloated executive salaries and shareholder benefits in the private sector? Likely more than 100% overpaid than even government workers. Not much value out there, today.
Ah, remember, ….
Private sector transactions are voluntary. You can chose not to transact with companies paying bloated executive salaries.
Under threat of incarceration our money is taken to overpay state/fed employees. We remain enslaved! […or chose not to work; instead posting on blogs]
Only to a small extent, much of my tax payments are spent by the government making (inflated) purchases from private sector contractors, manufacturers, and even service sector companies.
Yes, our money is confiscated to not only pay Fed/State employees but also some private companies. In general no one is voluntarily paying fed/state employees….maybe toll road and the like are exceptions.
Google/Read Friedman’s 4 type of money….it’s only a paragraph. Shirking gov’t is a must lest we perish. Corporate pay/bloat is self-correcting (except when Corp’s get in bed with Gov’t).
Bye and out.
That is the government overpaying using your tax dollars. Blame the overpaid government employees for wasting your money.
I prefer the term farmed….
I’m a lowly paid state worker but the bennies (including a defined benefit pension) makes it worth the while. It’s a tradeoff – lower pay now but a check for life.
As the graphs above show, the average public employee makes better pay, and better total with benefits, than a private sector worker. – There is a corrupt and immoral element to that.
Nothing *corrupt* about that. The private sector worker has just discovered what will happen to them if they are not organized. Plain and simple.
When you government parasites kill the host, your precious pensions are gone . Plain and simple and I look forward to that day.
We get it, you are another useless state worker that offers nothing.
Hi Mish.
Do you think the high school science class cirriculum should be –
Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Elective
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Elective
Either of the above
All of the above
None of the above
Whichever you picked – and it’s tough – congratulations! You just qualified as a $350,000 / year + benefits + pension suburban Chicago high school district superintendent!
SEL, SEL, …
I’d like to know how much teachers make if you calculate pay/(hours of actual work). Due to their type of work day, many holidays, and summer/winter/spring breaks their hourly rate would be extremely high. Way higher than what is posted.
I have a close friend that teaches Chemistry at a major college in CA and he always complains about his pay but he averages about 4hrs a day of instruction/lab and few hours here or there for office hours. Outside of that, it seems like he’s off all the time even though he’s full time and been there for over 20 years. Summer classes are optional and yield additional pay. What a gig!
The metric is $/hr … see footnote (4) copied below. Now, any “downtime” at less than 8 hours is probably unadjusted.
Footnote: (4) Wages for some occupations that do not generally work year-round, full time, are reported either as hourly wages or annual salaries depending on how they are typically paid.
Depends on what is being taught. I know two elementary school teachers that work 2-3 hours every evening during the school year and roughly 4-6 hours every weekend during the school year. I know a secondary teacher that works only an hour or two on the weekends during the school year if that. From what I gather, elementary school teachers are the most demanding due to the teacher having to plan for and teach 5-6 subjects as opposed to a secondary school teacher or college professor who specializes in one subject. With that said, your hypothesis is probably correct for secondary and college level teachers, but not for elementary teachers.
CPA’s average 60 hours a week for half the year
A lot of politics is just people fighting over money, including us, fighting for taxpayers to keep the money they earned in the first place.
The quality of service delivered by government workers is typically about half of what they are paid.
I do support unionizing the military. We’d never have another war! It would be a net savings.
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
— Stein’s Law
Interestingly this appeared on ZH today along wit Mish’s article
Seems Chicago is going to hit the fiscal cliff first among big cities nation wide. Will be interesting to see what if any solution happens since that’s going to eventually trickle down elsewhere.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chicagos-worst-nation-pension-crisis-strikes-again
Federal Bailout (like a loan forgiveness) for blue cities/states coming after Biden wins with …dare we dream 100M votes?
Step 1) declare crisis
Step 2) don’t let it go to waste
Obama’s hometown too.
Compensation, like many other aspects of employment, deserves a collection of metrics. Government worker groups focus on metrics favorable to them, ignoring many other metrics.
Overall, I strongly agree with Mish. Overall, total compensation of government workers far exceeds private sector workers especially considering benefits, employment stability, and lower tier workers.
Government worker groups, public employee pension agencies, and Democrats have conspired to strongly undervalue pension benefits of long term government workers while dismissing taxpayer risk of pension benefits. In my studies with quality data (from the mid 2000s) of government workers in CO, I found incredible levels of surplus deferred compensation for long term government workers. The pension benefits are so risky that no private sector equivalents exist except for politically protected union pensions. The surplus deferred compensation added on the average of $950,000 of compensation to long term administrator compensation. I found plenty of evidence of pension spiking in my data also.
Employment stability is another crucial aspect of compensation. Government workers have unmatched stability. Measuring compensation over a longer horizon (such as 10 years or even career) would show much higher total compensation of the longer period. Layoffs put a big dent on long term compensation and other quality of life issues.
A hundred years ago, in the early 1900’s, teachers in private schools and private college prof were paid much more than the average workers and gov workers. Union strikes plague steel co, coal and R/R. New immigrants and WWI vets competed with union workers. Veterans hospitals spread all over the country. Vets got the largest share of the gov budget. Forbes who led vet budget stole millions. Coolidge cleansed Harding scandals. He gambled on cutting income taxes, raising dividends taxes and tariff, before the Fed raise interest rates to fight inflation. He adopted Andrew Mellon new “radical” ideas that lower taxes will raise gov revenues, bc “millionaires” will invest their excess capital in promising co that will do well in the next few years.
Government employees also print fiat dollars, stoking inflation. Then demand compensation for said inflation.
Bank of Canada employees went on strike demanding 20% raise, the irony was lost on their superiors.
It’s not how much they are paid, but rather How Many are getting paid!
Mish, you can interview Randi Weingarten in Chicago after she addresses the DNC Chicago convention in 6 weeks. Include discussion about the 2 years of zoom classes while they sat on their asses.
A lot of shady stuff goes on in local governments. My mother’s small meager town, they get trash service twice a week. In my more high dollar area it’s once a week. How exactly are poor people generating all this trash? Amazon, UPS trucks in my area, some days it looks like a convoy. Most days it’s non stop. In her town, I rarely see deliveries. Not possible. I would bet a large bag of coin if the situation was investigated nepotism and fraud would be easily uncovered. And this is only trash! No telling what else is going on.
This is one of my favorite subjects. In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, public employees got paid less than private sector workers but were compensated by a more generous pension. Now public sector workers get paid more than private sector workers and still get the pension while private sector workers don’t get a pension in most cases. If social security is good enough for most taxpayers then it should be good enough for public employees.
I do think Federal employees this is still the case by and large. I know IT, the private sector gets paid a lot more. Also the military. I retired as an officer and I see some of these meager state employees with outrageous pensions, far exceeding mine.
Be a smack in the face if you leave CA and Gavin becomes prez.
Blaming the cops and/or their wages for the lack of staffing and the lack of support they get in Chicago is, frankly, absurd. Whatever CPD is paying, whatever their benefits are, whatever their pensions are, it’s obviously and factually not enough to attract new recruits or retain many of their veteran cops.
Hence the shortages being so bad that response times resemble the 3rd world.
Blame the voters for electing cop-hating politicians who make being a cop in Chicago, and most big cities, a very undesirable job path to much of the labor market regardless of the compensation.
“Chicago Teachers Union Seeks 50 Billion…”
That obviously has nothing to do with the children. Just what kind of cash cow does the teachers union think the parents are? Why are parents paying teachers so much money to indoctrinate their children, instead of educate them for a better future? The teachers union complained after Newsom’s California budget cuts and got some of the cuts restored. Newsom also got the Tax Payers Protection Act blocked from the November ballot.
However good math and science teachers are not compensated enough relative to tech and engineering private sector opportunities to attract and retain many.
The gvmt wages in chart one match the teacher wages in chart two down to the penny and that isn’t believable.
The ratio of total compensation of private to goverment has actually increased over the 20 years, meaning that in a relative sense total private compensation has grown more than government compensation!
“The gvmt wages in chart one match the teacher wages in chart two down to the penny and that isn’t believable.”
Call the BLS
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t03.htm
Here I see teachers’ wage/salary at $52.29. Should I be looking somewhere else? The $73.98 number matches what you charted for total compensation.
Wow, according to your link, teachers make more than any other group of state and local government workers in total compensation. 9% more than the next closest group “Management, professional, and related”.
I wasn’t sure if there are stats somewhere else, but the total comp matched what Mish charted.
It feels high to me, but according to the footnote it includes post-secondary teachers. Then again, below that is a breakdown by industry group and educational serves at college/university are significantly lower than $52.29 so I don’t understand where that high number comes from.
I did not get the data off Fred
It is from a Beta BLS data download very difficult to work with.
The BLS just modified the site and the Excel files are now corrupted.
I notified the BLS
Will get to the chart once I have access to the data
Thanks
I assumed the “education” grouping included everyone working in education who was’t teaching (support staff and admin). Employees like janitors, building maintenance techs, principals, secretaries, etc.
It would be nice if the BLS provided a brief description of what each category is comprised of in the chart.
Yes. A little incomprehensible that whomever the group is comprised of the average paid wage works out to over $100,000/yr for a standard 40-hour work week.
In spite of that, the total compensation for government workers was 46.9% greater than private sector workers in 2004, but Mish noted that is currently 39.9%…I think that would surprise almost everyone to learn that the gap has shrunk.
Thanks and apologies
I may have transposed a row.
Happy to correct!
I did not get the data off Fred
It is from a Beta BLS data download.
The BLS just modified the site and the Excel files are now corrupted.
I notified the BLS
Will get to the chart once I have access to the data
I suspected that might have been the case and am sorry I didn’t clearly convey that. Thank you for updating the information and the effort you put into making these types of statistics more meaningful to those of us on the fringes.
Mish, Call Me All is correct. According to the link he provided, teacher wages should be $52.29 in the chart.
OK will take a look.
I may have transposed a row.
The *average* government worker is quite under-paid. It is only the political appointees that get huge salaries. The *average* private sector worker is even more under-paid. It is stupid to say that the government workers are overpaid when in fact, it is the private sector workers that are getting (more) screwed.
Are we measuring their proper pay in direct proportion to the damage they cause? if so I agree, way underpaid.
That’s BS. The average government worker is not the problem. It is the “patronage jobs” (which are utilized by even the right-wing capitalist politicians) that are wayyyy overpaid and with no accountability.
In totalitarian states fully governed by the sole principle that all wealth and income shall be distributed entirely by arbitrary handouts via “asset appreciation” and other forms of purely political largess, there can not; by simple arithmetic; be any wealth nor income left over to actually earn.
Most teachers are part timers. Superintendent salaries skew up the wage chart.
Teachers salary : $80/hr x 40hr/week x 52 weeks = $167K/Y. Skilled workers benefit.
The low end jobs compete with new immigrants. Since they are the majority ==> deflation.
“Government total compensation is 39.9 percent more than private workers.”
How much less would taxes be if their compensation was brought down to parity with the private sector which funds them? I just saw that Blaze Pizza and Nutrogena are moving their headquarters out of California.
“..the private sector which funds them?”
The current “private sector” doesn’t fund anything. Hasn’t for decades. Picking over the dying carcass of what the “private sector” had built up in the two centuries leading to 1971, is what is still (barely and in ever declining fashion) “funding” what little is left of this undifferentiated, no-better-in-any-way-than-Venezuela dump of a once-had-some-value manurehole of a failed state.
We left California two years ago. We had HAD ENOUGH. Newsom is so corrupt, that he even found a way to overcome a recall due to his being caught at the FRENCH LAUNDRY RESTAURANT – – at the beginning stages of the Scamdemic, where he was at a birthday party – FOR A LOBBYIST – – with NO MASKS whilst telling US that we had to remain indoors.
If they foist that EFFER into the potential of being President, we will leave America. IF BIDEN REMAINS, we will tolerate America but we will NOT hold our breaths that he can possible even M.A.G.A. – – even if he MEANT IT.
America is in decline, and California is a festering BOIL on the ass of our Nation.
The dictators: stop asking that question. If they strike shingle mums cannot go to work to earn living, while their 3Y/17Y are in woke schools, bc transfer money isn’t enough to cover rent and other expenses.
School choice vouchers for the entire cost of a public school education resolve distinguishing competent from incompetent teachers. City schools have people who cannot speak English nor do sums teaching children. Net out is graduates who cannot speak English nor do sums.
“To understand why public unions should never exist…”
Fix that and the excesses related to it will disappear. Industrial unions are great, read American history to understand why. But unions do not belong in the realm of government employees. Then you get the very problems described above.
Government never evaluates the efficiency, productivity, or necessity of jobs and workers. For profit companies cannot function like that. Ultimately, it comes down to voters waking up and supporting better candidates for office. I haven’t seen that at the state or federal level yet.
Mish, why are you attacking our nation’s self-sacrificing heroes? (Tongue firmly implanted in cheek) Part of you almost wishes for insolvency only because if they can’t be paid they can’t be paid, no matter what the union contract says.
That is the goal of libertarianism … a few hundred trillionaires and everybody else survives on minimum wage.
idiotic comment of the day
Of the month I’d say
Dont feel bad. We have yet to find any country in the world that is successfully communist (minus the dictators) and that is successfully libertarian (minus the dictators).
and probably the most intelligent thing he’s said in years.
An interesting falacy. Minimum is a starting wage, not a permanent wage. Wages are based on value added by the employee. The Dodgers recently hired employee Ohtani for $700 million dollars.
And the Dodgers had that money because of lots of minimum wage workers that they could have paid more to, but, its more exciting and “proper” that enormous amounts of money be given to one guy that never grew up and still plays games for a living.
minimum wage/exploitation generates the revenue that facilitates high-achievers income?
got it. you have it all figured out!
The money wasn’t given to him. He earned it in the eyes of the ownership of the Dodgers and by extension the fans (who pay the owners who pay the players).
The same with the minimum wage workers. They also are earning it in the eyes of ownership.
It’s simple supply and demand. Virtually anyone can sling hash, but virtually no one can hit 100 mph baseballs.
That’s a unique definition of libertarianism. Did you craft that yourself?
It roughly describes the current situation in the U.S. and you won’t find a knowledgable person describing the government/economy as libertarian-based.
The goal of Libertarianism is everyone acts in their own best interests.
If you make minimum wage, that’s the interest you are acting in on your behalf. Otherwise, you’d be bettering yourself in whatever way earned you more money.
The same ‘on your behalf’ concept applies to how you spend your money on goods/services or barter your goods/time and so on.
Meanwhile all the govt employees that Mish has hated for years get the kinds of real salaries and real benefits that make it possible to pay the bulk of the taxes in this country and provide the services and transfer payments so that people dont have to live in poverty as they did for centuries in Europe (a libertarian paradise). Moving millions from millions to one guy no matter how fast he whacks a ball is no good for the middle class. And libertarians hate the middle class. They want the wild west, where everyone was either a super gunslinger … or was dead.
Anyone who believes Europe is a Libertarian Paradise is an economic nutcase and about to get banned.
The unions are smart. They purchase politicians so that as the negotiate new contracts, it’s union on both sides of the table. It’s a win-win … unless you are the taxpayer of the one who receives the service provided by the union employees. 6 of the top 10 politician purchasers are unions.
Wonder if they can get any of their BidenBribe back? Do you think “Doctor” Jill will return to campus in the fall? She’ll have lots of free time once Joe resigns.
It’s just as bad when you look at comparable job categories. Say private gardener v public gardener. Did a great study on this for citizens against govt waste some years ago
Yes, great benefits while you are working, then early retirement with even better benefits. Meanwhile the quality of education gets worse and worse. It’s a scam!
Sure IS Teachers in Eastern Europe sure don’t earn anywhere near that