Substitute Teachers, Short-Term Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Substitute Teachers, Short-Term worker at that point in the distribution, so $51,930 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

BLS counted 481,300 Substitute Teachers, Short-Term jobs in May 2024, which is 0.31% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Wyoming, where the location quotient is 2.68, meaning the occupation holds 2.68 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 103,210 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 36.8% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $37,220 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($63,460) is 2.4 times the 10th percentile ($26,240), a gap of $37,220 a year. The mean of $44,930 sitting above the median of $38,470 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 103,210 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, California would lead at $57,260. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Substitute Teachers, Short-Term stands number 72 by employment and number 728 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 50% less than its group median, and it supplies 5.4% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 16 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,470, 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 30,210 jobs, 6.3% 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, Daphne-Fairhope-Foley, AL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $24,130 a year, against $78,690 in Trenton-Princeton, 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

As a household number, $38,470 a year is $3,206 a month gross, $1,480 every two weeks, $740 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($31,310) to the 75th ($51,930) is worth $20,620 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $3,206 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $42,317 would sit between the median ($38,470) and the 75th percentile ($51,930), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $31,310, is $7,160 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education, Teaching Assistants, Except Postsecondary, Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education, Self-Enrichment Teachers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.