Communications Teachers, Postsecondary Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Communications Teachers, Postsecondary worker at that point in the distribution, so $103,230 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 29,260 people in May 2024, 0.02% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 3,020 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 29.8% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in New Mexico, whose location quotient of 2.75 says this work is 2.75 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $160,210, which is 3.4 times the $47,100 at the 10th, a difference of $113,110 annually. Because the mean wage ($90,340) sits above the median ($77,800), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $134,780, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Communications Teachers, Postsecondary stands number 485 by employment and number 231 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Educational Instruction and Library Occupations, the group median wage is $76,210 across 64 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 2% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 14 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $77,800, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,500 jobs, 8.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 105 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $76,180 a year, against $147,510 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $77,800 works out to $6,483 a month before taxes, $2,992 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,496 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($60,060) to the 75th ($103,230) is worth $43,170 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $85,580 would sit between the median ($77,800) and the 75th percentile ($103,230), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $60,060, is $17,740 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Educational Instruction and Library Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Education Teachers, Postsecondary, Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary, Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary, Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary, Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary, Special Education Teachers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.