English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary worker at that point in the distribution, so $103,730 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

With 59,590 jobs nationally, English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary make up 0.04% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: New York alone holds 6,330 of those jobs, the top three states hold 26.7%, and the deepest concentration sits in Rhode Island (location quotient 2.81, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $47,540 or less, and one in ten earns $154,800 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.3 to 1 and the annual gap is $107,260. The mean ($90,400) versus median ($78,270) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $130,580, and New York the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary stands number 359 by employment and number 225 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 3% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 15 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $78,270, 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 5,430 jobs, 9.1% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $66,940 a year, against $156,450 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $6,522 a month before tax, $3,010 biweekly, $1,505 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($59,780) to the 75th ($103,730) is worth $43,950 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $86,097 would sit between the median ($78,270) and the 75th percentile ($103,730), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $59,780, is $18,490 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: Teachers and Instructors, All Other, Educational Instruction and Library Workers, All Other, Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education, Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary, Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School, Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary. The full directory is on the Careers hub.