Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary offer sit among all 17,170 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 17,170 jobs nationally, Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 2,020 of those jobs, the top three states hold 28.1%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 16.98, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $65,330 at the 25th percentile, $94,680 at the middle, $127,480 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $122,890, a ratio of 3.4 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary runs from the $124,780 median in California down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (2,020 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary stands number 587 by employment and number 149 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 24% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 17 of the 44 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $94,680, 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

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 1,640 jobs, 9.6% 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, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $99,460 a year, against $147,540 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $7,890 a month before tax, $3,642 biweekly, $1,821 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($65,330) to the 75th ($127,480) is worth $62,150 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 $104,148 would sit between the median ($94,680) and the 75th percentile ($127,480), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $65,330, is $29,350 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: Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary, Museum Technicians and Conservators, Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary, Economics Teachers, Postsecondary, Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary, Curators. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.