Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($44,150) to the 90th ($158,240). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 12,680 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 1,900 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 32.7% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in West Virginia, whose location quotient of 2.53 says this work is 2.53 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $44,150 or less, and one in ten earns $158,240 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.6 to 1 and the annual gap is $114,090. The mean ($87,980) versus median ($75,890) 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 $130,340, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary stands number 646 by employment and number 249 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 0% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 12 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $75,890, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 780 jobs, 6.2% 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, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $109,330 a year, against $144,520 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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

The median annual wage of $75,890 works out to $6,324 a month before taxes, $2,919 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,459 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($57,290) to the 75th ($101,420) is worth $44,130 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 $83,479 would sit between the median ($75,890) and the 75th percentile ($101,420), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $57,290, is $18,600 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: Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary, Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary, Museum Technicians and Conservators, Economics Teachers, Postsecondary, Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary, Curators. The full directory is on the Careers hub.