Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education worker at that point in the distribution, so $77,720 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

May 2024 employment stood at 114,410, or 0.07% of the U.S. total. Florida leads the state table with 9,450 jobs; the top three states sum to 22.4% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Louisiana posts a location quotient of 2.44, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $45,750 or less, and one in ten earns $99,360 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $53,610. The mean ($67,020) versus median ($61,430) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education runs from the $86,390 median in Rhode Island down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Florida (9,450 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education stands number 243 by employment and number 388 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 19% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.3% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 21 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $61,430, 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 8,970 jobs, 7.8% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Raleigh-Cary, NC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $52,900 a year, against $94,070 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $61,430 works out to $5,119 a month before taxes, $2,363 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,181 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($50,290) to the 75th ($77,720) is worth $27,430 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 $67,573 would sit between the median ($61,430) and the 75th percentile ($77,720), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $50,290, is $11,140 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Business Teachers, Postsecondary, Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary, Library Technicians, English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary, Education Teachers, Postsecondary, Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.