How Satisfied Are U.S. Teachers With Their Jobs?

According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the fall of 2023, compensation is the aspect of their job that most U.S. teachers are least satisfied with. 29 percent were not too and 22 percent not at all satisfied with their pay, while all other aspects ranked significantly higher in terms of current satisfaction. Chief among them were social aspects of their work: Relationships with their peers, school administrators and the parents of their students gave the surveyed teachers the least cause for complaint.

The survey pool contained teachers from K-12 public schools, meaning educators working in primary and secondary education. Adult and tertiary education like college programs didn't factor into the results. In terms of the share of respondents being extremely or very satisfied, most polled aspects ranked between 35 and 46 percent. The outlier was the relationship with fellow teachers, which 7 in 10 survey participants rated as extremely and very satisfactory. More than half of all respondents also said that the relationship with school administrators was either extremely or very satisfactory.

While teachers are not among the worst-paid occupations in the United States with a mean annual salary of $69,000 according to May 2023 estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are drastic regional and seniority differences in educator pay. For example, data collected by the National Education Association, the biggest teachers' union in the U.S. with around three million members, shows that salaries for new teachers are at around $44,500 per year. However, three in ten school districts pay freshly-graduated teachers below $40,000 per year. Only a few professions, most of them concentrated in the industry, agriculture, retail and hospitality sectors, had a mean annual wage below that figure.