Why are teachers and nurses underpaid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No profession is underpaid. All professions operate under supply and demand.

You individually might feel like you are underpaid. If you are switch careers to a job that is in higher demand with a higher salary.

I don’t know if it’s as simple as this. There is no completely “free-market” supply and demand when there are so many interferences and artifices that affect the environment.

Teacher salaries are affected by teachers’ unions and bloated self-serving administrations among other things.
This means that the more difficult to fill positions cannot increase the salary in order to attract more applicants, so the worse schools have higher turnover, which in turn negatively affects those schools.

Personally I believe we need many more male teachers at all levels, but Union rules would not allow higher pay for that. And better quality teachers across the board. Now that women have many more options, smart women are not concentrated in teaching anymore. We’ll see how it pans out with AI, DOGE et al, and the loss of “laptop jobs”. We may find more willing high quality candidates for teaching.

There is something to this. Growing up in a comfortable UMC family in the 80s-90s, so many of the moms were teachers, either at private or good public schools. The dads were doctors, lawyers, bankers, corporate executives while the moms were teachers and nurses, though there were a few who were also doctors/lawyers but they were a distinct minority. Many of the moms taught school while putting husbands through med/law schools, took a decade or 15 years off to raise kids, then went back to teaching. But today? All the doctors/lawyers are married to other doctors/lawyers/senior corp executives. Not teachers. And the kids of teachers I knew growing up did not become teachers. Of my entire class from a prep school, I can think of one who became a teacher while we have several professors.

[Anonymous]

Legacy of "women's work" unfortunately

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No profession is underpaid. All professions operate under supply and demand.

You individually might feel like you are underpaid. If you are switch careers to a job that is in higher demand with a higher salary.

I don’t know if it’s as simple as this. There is no completely “free-market” supply and demand when there are so many interferences and artifices that affect the environment.

Teacher salaries are affected by teachers’ unions and bloated self-serving administrations among other things.
This means that the more difficult to fill positions cannot increase the salary in order to attract more applicants, so the worse schools have higher turnover, which in turn negatively affects those schools.

Personally I believe we need many more male teachers at all levels, but Union rules would not allow higher pay for that. And better quality teachers across the board. Now that women have many more options, smart women are not concentrated in teaching anymore. We’ll see how it pans out with AI, DOGE et al, and the loss of “laptop jobs”. We may find more willing high quality candidates for teaching.

There is something to this. Growing up in a comfortable UMC family in the 80s-90s, so many of the moms were teachers, either at private or good public schools. The dads were doctors, lawyers, bankers, corporate executives while the moms were teachers and nurses, though there were a few who were also doctors/lawyers but they were a distinct minority. Many of the moms taught school while putting husbands through med/law schools, took a decade or 15 years off to raise kids, then went back to teaching. But today? All the doctors/lawyers are married to other doctors/lawyers/senior corp executives. Not teachers. And the kids of teachers I knew growing up did not become teachers. Of my entire class from a prep school, I can think of one who became a teacher while we have several professors.

Kids of teachers don’t become teachers. That’s true. But the reason isn’t because they have their sights “higher”; it’s because teachers don’t want their children to suffer in a thankless, impossible job.

I’m a teacher and a dang good one. I told my kids to pick anything but teaching. It’s not that I don’t respect teachers. It’s that I know teaching takes extreme talent and effort, and what you get out of it in terms of respect and pay isn’t a fraction of what you put into it.

My kids can get easier jobs that pay more. They can enjoy a better work/life balance.

I know they could become tremendous teachers because they have the grit, stamina, and intellect to do well. But why? Why work so hard for so little?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are teachers really underpaid?

I know a teacher who teaches special Ed 4th graders. She is pulling in $133k per year with 18 years in. Insane benefits and a pension. The ones who bellyache the most about being underpaid in teaching are the ones who don't have a lot of years in and who work at crappy school districts.

Go read up on the epic debacle of the entire state of Illinois. There are teachers there collecting like $100-200k per year in pension who make more in pension than they made in contributions to the system. They didn't even serve as senior level teaching admin positions. It's completely absurd.

Has she said the word pension? Because I started in FCPS in and was never offered a pension. Older teachers were grandfathered in. Maybe your friend has one. But that’s not the experience of the mid-career teacher in our area.