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I mean they are pretty colors I guess...but not having purple between dark purple and pink, and then have red thrown in the middle is just a poor decision.
That is the worst set of colors I have ever seen in a display of data. At the very least it should go dark to light so that there is an intuitive interpretation that matches the data.
Yeah and I don't know why you would do CoL on a state level. GA for instance is set at $96k for a single adult to live comfortably. That might be true in metro Atlanta but not in like... Tifton
Color scale? WTF happened to the Great Lakes?
I immediately question the validity of any of this information.
Also, I get that teachers are often underpaid. But most of the people I know make less than those "comfortable living" thresholds.
It’s not inflated a lot of people just don’t want to admit they’re kind of poor. Poor doesn’t mean destitute, you can be poor and have a place to live, always have food in the house, have fulfilling but inexpensive hobbies, etc. a lotttttt of people in the us are kinda poor, due to the widening class divide and all.
if you’re not properly saving for retirement, or you have to check your budgeting app to figure out if you can afford to go to that cool event in your city, how comfortable are you really? That 50/30/20 rule didn’t pop up out of nowhere
This is exactly it. Most people don't recognize that *most people can't afford to retire* without cutting back their lifestyles to the absolute minimum. It's very common for lifestyle expenses to rise too much for retirement -- this is because most people don't feel comfortable living on a budget that is similar to living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Only a relatively small 30ish percent of people in North America have enough to maintain a reasonable lifestyle, have children, *and* retire successfully. Over 50 percent cannot have all three.
A lot of people don’t want to admit they are blowing their cash on coffees and DoorDash and are actually doing at least alright. I think a lot of people are further from the brink of collapse than they think. Or should be if they had better habits. Not everyone, but a lot of people
To me, poor means that you are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. As in, I need to pay rent so I won't be going to the grocery store.
> or you have to check your budgeting app to figure out if you can afford to go to that cool event in your city, how comfortable are you really?
Why not broaden your scope? If you can't afford to vacation out of your country every summer, or if you can't own the car that you want, or if you fly less than 4 times a year, how comfortable are you? I feel like I'm very comfortable, but I'm still driving an 8-year-old car...
The 20 didn’t pop out of nowhere. It’s a very common rule of thumb for saving, and well supported historically. The 50 / 30 split is less common, and was apparently popularized by a 2006 book by Elizabeth Warren. Many other budget suggestions are
70 10 20, 80 10 10 - but the 80 includes needs and wants, and the extra 10 is charity, 60 20 20 etc. effectively the 50 / 30 does pop out of nowhere. I also disagree that needing to consider budget for cool events is a sign being anything short of comfortable
Being able to do whatever without considering a budget is historically unexpected, and beyond the comfortable into the “we’re not rich, just ‘comfortable’ level of comfort expectation.
It’s a reasonable measure of what’s needed.
Now, I don’t think they are factoring in dual income households. So like, a teacher could make… 1/2 of $101K, or about $50.5K, if their partner makes that.
I don't think I agree. Comfortable doesn't mean "I can live without constant stress." Comfortable means "I can lose my job and seek for a job in my industry for a month or two without compromising my retirement."
The number of people who satisfy that is very small in modern day America. Most of us are just 1 disaster away from pushing retirement back several years.
Any budget that included 20% savings would meet your definition though, the 30% wants category is what makes this budget more than comfortable. It seems like a single adult working full time should be fairly comfortable spending more like 10-15% of their income on wants, which would reflect the common gut reaction that the average teacher can have a comfortable life in most states, note - average is average not all a not poor school districts, not newly graduated teachers, not those with significant student debt (as loan payments would suck up more than their wants budget has) etc.
When data is presented like this, it fundamentally makes many people not trust the ideas at all. The underlying calculator used to develop these salaries - https://livingwage.mit.edu/ uses typical costs, to determine the needs budget which don’t scale accurately at all and which already include the wants budget. So it takes 80% of the income needed, and calls it 50%, then says you need 30% of the new inflated amount for wants. However some of the assumptions of this calculator are based on Two adults anyway, which understates the income. Basically the methodology itself is barely math and the numbers are therefore meaningless.
Apparently we need to make nearly $250,000 to live comfortably with our two kids in Minnesota, even though we’ve been doing so with less than half of that (and put plenty into investments).
Those numbers, and therefore this article, are complete BS.
This data is horrendous. The source of "comfortable" living assumes a 50-30-20 ratio of needs, wants, and savings. The most egregious error is the assumption that MIT's Living Wage Calculator only represents needs, so they doubled it, even though it already includes many forms of entertainment.
Also that just because your fixed expenses are higher doesn’t mean you need to save more and spend more on fun items. Higher taxes doesn’t mean I need to buy more stuff on Amazon lol
Yeah the data is stupid and not beautiful. The “minimum” income is somehow a top 25% income in each state except California. What sort of single person needs like 150% of the household income of their state just for themselves.
Yea this is pure manipulation of data to get a particular result. I'm all for teachers' getting paid more; by and large they deserve it. But this is just bad proganda with a terrible color scheme.
Yeah a quick google tells me that the average teacher [makes about 58k](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary), which is actually 10k over the [median personal income](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/14/median-annual-income-in-every-us-state.html)
Maybe teachers *should* get paid more but when you make your argument like this, it doesn't help your case.
Looked at the state I live in (with 2 kids) and it says that a single person would need to make roughly 5k more than myself and spouse make combined…. We aren’t middle class and saving is a struggle but jesus the numbers are just wrong lol
Oh, if you click through to the source for those numbers they have some values for a family with two working parents that are truly eye popping. Apparently my household should be bringing in a quarter million a year.
Can't believe I had to come this far down for someone to call BS on the "comfortable living" figures. First comment was colors. I mean I get that it's "Data is beautiful" but let's occasionally challenge the data as well.
Even then, the numbers would be highly inflated, at least in my state (NE). A single person’s “needs” are not ~30k anywhere here, which is 50% of the amount stated after accounting for taxes.
Living cost is extremely regional, plotting it at a state level is misleading to begin with. Not to mention, the "minimum salary for a single adult to live comfortably" is exceedingly high. $82k in Mississippi? Really?
This is the kind of shitty information turning into a shitty map with unreadable color scales. Unfortunately, most Redditors just vote by the title and never bother to read the content.
Yeah, let's take Illinois.
95k living wage. Chicago? Sure. Burbs? 30+ min from Chicago that's comfy. Downstate? You can literally buy homes for 25k.
Plus the variance in districts is massive. My son started his teaching career in a poor suburb. He now teaches in a wealthy suburb, 2 years later. At the poor district, kids were sharing books and he bought multiple kids lunch every day because they couldn't afford it. Current one has the student parking lot with cars I've never heard of.
Despite being the top teacher in the poor district, with multiple bonuses and every extra they could throw at him, he now makes over 25k more and is one of the lowest paid teachers at the rich district school. 25 miles difference between them.
$95K for a single person in the city, they can live where ever they want, it's not even close to a hardship -that said L1S1 for CPS is over $60K which is still not bad for a single person in the city.
What a difference going from the south side to the north side.
The listed "minimum salary for a single person to live comfortably" values are quite high.
I am at my personal peak income with 10yrs of experience in my field. And I'm still making solidly less than the "live comfortably" rate for my state.
Even so, I've had my student loans paid off for ages,
I've got a house in a good neighborhood (suburb of a major city) that's half paid off, and I've never had to have a roommate to split costs. By all accounts, I'm living the American dream, financially. And yet apparently I'm poor?
Am I missing something?
Not only that, there’s no mention of the fact that teachers work ~9 months of the year.
It would be much more accurate to compare what 9 months look like for everyone else, and include total compensation: pension + the additional pay some teachers opt for by working summers
The are 180 school days per year, less in some states. The typical career person has 250 working days.
It seems like someone who works 28% fewer days should be paid accordingly.
The thing is that they're averaging over entire states, which usually gives you poorly representative figures. It's including urban areas, which represent a majority of the population but a minority of the area, making large swathes of rural America seem expensive when they're really dirt cheap.
Like in Illinois for example, you can be comfortable off $40k in the middle of nowhere with a rent under $500, but Chicago may be a different story. The state-wide figure is going to wind up being somewhere between.
I can't imagine there's anywhere in Alabama you need 80k to be comfortable. Teachers salaries are probably lower than they should be in most places, but this strikes me as setting an arbritary high bar for agenda based reasons.
Yeah this is obvious nonsense. The median *household* income is $74k across the entire US and $59k in Alabama. But a single earner living in Alabama needs $82k to be “comfortable”?
We have numbers averaged across the entire US population - household income - which is 67k. That number can even include 2 incomes.
A minimum salary of 80-100k in the US for a single person suggests earning six figures should be the average, but that is far from the truth.
Most people live in cities like you note, so I don't see that as big of a problem as you do. But, these numbers and the methodology behind them is just totally out to lunch. Also doesn't factor in pensions for teachers needing less than the already high 20% for savings... and no I'm not saying teachers aren't underpaid in America, they definitely are.
Meanwhile, the Chicago teachers union has bargained for average teacher pay at $93K now, with many making well into the six figures. 25 year olds with roommates and a 4-year degree making $100K...
Bizarre chart and methodology, if you ask me.
The rate they chose is more than the median HOUSEHOLD income in I think every state, so really not sure where they pulled these numbers from. That said I'm in NJ and I don't think my wife and I were in the "comfortable" standard of living until we were making around $120k a year. That is about the range we could afford a 1bed/1bath apartment in the city we lived in, go out regularly and still save some money. It was still relatively modest living but comfortable. That said, not everyone lives in the shadow of NYC here.
I make over the single adult limit, but my wife and I are *well* below the frankly insane $200k they say it requires to live comfortably in my state.
I know maybe 4 people in this state, which I left for only a decade and otherwise have spent 30+ years in, who make enough to "live comfortably" per this site.
Those numbers are for a single adult. It's significantly less expensive for a couple than it is for two single people because there are a lot of shared costs, you can't just double the single adult limit and call that the "married limit" (something which is never even mentioned in the article) and then use it to say the numbers are "frankly insane".
This isn't what I'm doing - I am literally using the breakdown they use. Their family income requirement is well above the single income.
Ohio:
Single "living comfortably": ~$80k (I make significantly more than this and am a very high earner for my area)
Family "living comfortably": ~$200k (this seems insane to me)
Median wage in Ohio is about $45k
Source is linked within the article, but here it is for convenience
https://smartasset.com/data-studies/state-salary-living-comfortably-2024
I was going to say 87k for Texas is way too high. It may be like that in Austin but you can live in the H and be comfortable making 60k a year if you live correctly.
Agreed. Houstonian teacher here. At 10 years. I make $74k. Paid off student loans. Paid off mortgage.
Ima penny pincher to the max and live in a rough neighborhood. For CoL and comfortability, I am living great.
Apparently you need 90k to live comfortably anywhere. I can assure you I've been comfortable on a lot less. Maybe comfortable means a new Tahoe every 5 years too.
Yea they are much much higher than they should be. My state has listed $79k for comfortable lifestyle and it’s more around $38k. So no clue what these numbers mean
>The listed "minimum salary for a single person to live comfortably" values are quite high.
Just looking at CA where I live: the listed salary is >110k. Going by a '1/3 of gross for rent' gives you 2,750 USD per month for rent. In most places in CA you will be able to find a one BR apartment for that. If you live with roommates then you can do that basically anywhere.
That people who claim that you are "poor" if you earn just $100k while living in the Bay Area are delusional and stuck by lifestyle creep. The cost of living there is high, but not that high.
And yes those people exist, they always show up on reddit when that is discussed.
So true about lifestyle creep. People will just overpay for things constantly (bars, restaurants, expensive hobbies, etc) then complain that they’re poor here and it couldn’t possibly be their fault lmao.
Then there’s all the people who wasted money going to an extremely expensive private college then being surprised when they get out to see they’ve got high 5 figure debt to deal with afterwards. Yet with 2 years at community college then 2 at state school you end up with exactly the same degree and usually a much larger network of connections… hmm…
I live in the Bay Area but a decent way from SF. I do live within a couple miles of a BART station.
In 2019 1 BR apartments were renting for 1.6k and now there are some at 1.8k. These are the fairly basic apartments.
Calculating back to the amount you need to make gets you to ~65k and that is before taxes. You should be able to earn that and live in a 1BR in my area. It won't be a nice 1BR. If you can do roommates then it is lower.
I also find the 'teachers massively underpaid' narrative to be strange (both of my parents were teachers). Teachers get the whole summer off, get pensions, don't have to deal with normal office stuff, and have really high job security. People are drawn to teaching for those reasons. The wages are a bit low for the education needed but people go into it because of the other benefits.
I have seen other calculations on teacher pay and if you look at the fine print they assume that teachers work 10 or 11 hour days, this just isn't the case.
I think there is a fair point in saying teachers are underpaid. I've seen a chart comparing teacher salaries to other professions that require a college degree, teachers were much lower. There were two other lines for comparison, the average of all other professions that require a college degree, and the average for female dominated fields.
Female dominated fields was lower than total average but teachers were even lower. It's hard to get competent people to be teachers when they can make a lot more money working with anything else, you're basically relying on people doing it for love at this point.
FWIW, teachers in some places really are massively underpaid. Teachers in other places are actually paid quite well for the hours worked (even after you account for things like buying classroom supplies).
E.g. go look up Chicago Public Schools salary schedules. They are a little complicated to track all of the steps and lanes involved, but an established teacher gets paid pretty well considering the number of days they are expected to work and the qualifications required to get the job.
https://ctulocal1.github.io/salaries/20200724_finalized_Teacher_Pay_Schedule.html
Steps refer to the number of years of experience, lanes refer to the level of education. Both steps and lanes increase every year (so next year you will be one step higher AND get the annual bump). A teacher in their early 30s with 10 years of experience and a BA working a 208 day year would get paid 79.4k plus a pension pickup that brings their total comp to 85k (with pretty good benefits AND summers off) in 22-23. In 23-24, the same step would have a comp of 87.4k...BUT that person has one more year of experience so they go up a step and earn 90.3k.
Sometimes they try to get sneaky there--they will say the contract only gives a 2.8% raise because that's the increase YoY, but they neglect to mention that everyone goes up a step and the real raise was 6.3%.
Now what happens if the teacher goes and gets a easy and inexpensive masters degree over the summer (you could get a hard and expensive one if you want, but the contract doesn't care). That bumps them up a lane to 95k. You can do some additional credits of study to bump up another lane.
I think that's pretty fair pay for someone who is like 33 years old with a job that's not super hard to get, They'll be over 100k in another year or two. I'm not saying it is not a hard job, but that's a pretty good deal.
Although it makes me feel EXTRA bad for teachers in (usually red) states that pay them half that to teach in similar schools.
$80k+ to live "comfortably" in ANY state in the US? I call BS. What are they considering? 80k for one person is living pretty large in most places other than the coasts maybe.
I lived comfortably on 70k in the bay area, one of the most expensive cost of living areas in the country. I don't have kids of course, but if their metric is a "single adult" then their numbers are hilariously inflated and disconnected from reality.
This is pretty biased and another example of people using this sub to push an agenda.
“Living comfortably” is tremendously subjective and they’ve just pulled that definition out of thin air based on arbitrary definitions. They’ve said it should mean spending 50% of income on necessities (eg rent, food), 30% on discretionary spending (eg vacation, dining out) and saving 20%. That’s a VERY comfortable lifestyle - most people will tell you it’s normal to spend 30% on rent alone so this is a much better-than-average level of financial security.
What their math says is they to “live comfortably” you need to earn something like *$90-100k ANNUAL SALARY*. Median individual income in the US is $48k, so they’re saying teachers should make *DOUBLE* the average person. They’ve just used this creative framing because if they came out and said “teachers should make double average salary” or “teachers should make $100k” people would reject the idea as nonsense (because it is).
That doesn’t even get into the matter of claiming teachers (by their framework) should be saving 20% annually for retirement (which is very high) despite the PENSION they have which effectively already offers them a very comfortable retirement income without requiring them to do any personal retirement savings. This is asking to have your cake and eat it too - to have a luxe pension while also being paid like you don’t.
This feels a lot like paid promotion for teachers unions disguised as objective unbiased research / writing.
There's also the fact that many teachers only work 9 months out of the year. The salary looks a lot better when you take that into account. Not to say it couldn't be better and in some cases definitely should be.
(mom is a teacher, wife was a teacher, I was a teacher).
In California though, most teachers have it pretty good. The average pay in our local district is $120K, retirement (with pension) at age 60 and cadillac health insurance for $100/month.
Whenever things like this are posted, the "comfortable living" line is based on a whole lot more than basic living.
>This cost of living was calculated based on the popular 50/30/20 budget rule, which breaks down expenses into necessities (50% of income), wants (30% of income), and savings/debt repayment (20% of income).
So this takes what you need to exist, doubles it, then says that's the minimum to be comfortable. I find that excessive. My bills took up 60-65% of my income for a while and that wasn't exactly uncomfortable.
I don't say this as a way of saying teachers **aren't** underpaid, but to point out that people seem to be able to make data say anything they want by changing the metric by which it is judged.
This was my takeaway. In a two income household it's okay for one to be a lower earner and you can make it if you aren't dumb with your money. I do feel for all the single people trying to make it out there.
There are two ways you can interpret this:
1. A sizable majority of Americans are, in fact, impoverished.
2. The cut off they chose for “comfortable” needs to be reevaluated.
Which do you think is more likely?
Option 2. If the rest of the world can survive on far less, then the US can stop acting so impoverished on their throne of wealth. Comfortable means luxurious for too many people.
That said we do need to work on our wealth inequality, we should strive for a larger middle class, instead of our trend of continuing to give more and more money to the upper class.
that’s pretty nuts.
by that definition, one individual working 2 and a half days a week would cover the expenses of an entire household……..
this has never been the case, nor is it the case anywhere across the world.
Dang these are some high numbers for a person to live comfortably alone. You definitely don’t need to make over $95k a year as a single person to have a comfortable life in PA. So I guess the question is, what constitutes “living comfortably”?
Teachers in the blue states (CA is over $95k - for 9 months of work - so if you annualized it, then they would make over $120k) make pretty good bank. I would also say the “Min. Salary for Single Adult to Live Comfortably” number is unrealistic and in most cases too high. You don’t need to make $113k to live comfortably in CA, unless you need to live by the coast. This smells like data-tweaking.
I should have been a teacher.... I make 20-30k. I've worked for local government for ten years with my psych and soc degree. Working food service now has me earning what I averaged with local government and social services work. It's pathetic. But I have more free time.
Road maintenance is actually [bankrupting American cities](https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0?si=jZwSAzeHU-e6Ue_-). They’re [financed by debt](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/26/roads-and-debt) that is usually paid by the expectation of city growth which often is done by building more roads that will need more maintenance in the future…
We pay less taxes than the rest of the wealthy world. Our military is also the smallest it’s been as a share of gdp in decades. It’s the low taxes that starve our public services.
You weren’t wrong we do spend more of our gdp on the military than other wealthy nations. But the difference isn’t big enough big enough to explain the difference in civilian public spending.
>Here's a pie chart
Teachers and police are largely financed at the local level--school districts for teachers specifically.
That 1% for police is almost all FBI, DEA, etc. That 4% for ED is mostly federal grant programs like Title I and Pell Grants.
Does that Education budget include the federal school lunch program? No, because that's a USDA program and thus would be counted in Ag. Dept's budget. Head Start? That's an HHS program.
Roads are a mix of federal, state, and local.
So if you're looking to see a big piece of pie for "Teacher pay" in the federal budget, then you won't find it because that number is $0. Maybe that's part of the problem.
But it's somewhat misleading to point to the federal budget. More so bc Fed. budgeting is filled with historical quirks and compromise that make it unintuitive. Not to say that $7B for an aircraft carrier that's still not combat ready isn't insane, but not the right budget.
For a more oranges to oranges comparison, here's a breakdown for the [City of Los Angeles](https://openbudget.lacity.org/#!/year/2023/operating/0/department_name?vis=pieChart) and the [LA Unified School District.](https://my.lausd.net/opendata/dashboard?language=en) 16% of LA City's budget is for policing. 38% of LAUSD's budget is for teacher salaries.
What are the actual salaries of the teachers? How does it compare to the median salaries in the states? That is a far better indicator of actual teacher situations. Most people in America cannot afford to live comfortably.
That smart asset comfortable living calculator is horrible. 113k to live comfortably as a single person in California. In the Bay Area? Sacramento? Out in some tiny town?
It would be much more useful to compare teacher salaries in cities (and rural areas), and compare their salaries to the median salaries of other local residents.
I live in Colorado and 103,000 is more than comfortable. That would be more than enough to buy a house in most suburbs.
Maybe in downtown Denver that would be a lower end salary.
But this is incredibly flawed stat to say 103,000 is what is needed to live comfortable. I know plenty of people working jobs from barber to pastor making around 60-70 thousand dollars and they live fine.
I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve more. My cousin just got a full time teaching gig without a degree because of the shortage. So I think the qualifications for teacher are going down, but in a way that is helping because a teaching gig without a degree isn’t a bad job anymore.
I think the real question is with what we are paying teacher are we getting a good education?
"APRIL 25, 2024 – Nationally, public school spending per student rose 8.9% from $14,358 in FY 2021 to $15,633 in FY 2022"
The average class size is 20 students in the US. That's $312,660 per classroom. California, it's $600,000+ per classroom.
It's not an income problem, it's a spending problem. The media will not give you this simple explanation. Best Government money can buy.
I think you might not be aware of what it costs to run any large org, even in private companies with 0 government subsidies.
Let me put it this way, on average for an office worker you cost about twice as much as your take home pay. A lot of the times this isn't even just counting the cost of your benefits but the physical cost of having an office with a parking lot in a decent area.
Schools feel this even more, since because your dealing with children there's a lot of regulation. Maximum class sizes, nurse availability, sports programs, subsides lunch programs, etc. etc. etc.
What changed? Obviously, the beurocracy has increased in the last 50 years. We have 7 layers in California. The average teacher has 30k in benefits and retirement on top of their pay.
What regulations have changed? More lawyers and politicians getting rich?
Subsidized lunch program is the USDA, and that's year round. Hence, more beurocracy.
California spends more $$ per pupil. Why is it one of the worst educational systems in US? Best Government money can buy.
It’s honestly surprising how many teachers there still are considering how shit of a job it is. Dealing with shit kids, or shit parents, shit administrators, long hours, and shit pay.
Well the idea is that they're part of a household with two incomes. But often it doesn't turn out that way. Income disparities due to jobs and childcare can create struggling households and teachers. Also they used single adult metrics but most adults don't make 100,000 a year which is what this states. The idea that we should be paying remotely this much especially accounting for rural vs urban differences is actually insane and shows how poorly this article is written.
Lol please
work 9 months a year. often have salary over 100k
protected by a union
government mandated salary increases
increases for furthering education
supported by charity driven parent groups
...if anything they've become complacent and the threat of privatizing is going to screw many generations out of quality public education
I live in a different world as a high school history teacher. The kids want to learn history, they're engaged, and I can mix up lesson plans. Math and English have it much, much harder. Older students are much easier to deal with in my experience. I also coach baseball so done teaching by 1:30. Weekends off, holidays off, winter and summer breaks.
I'm paid very well, although I have a master's degree + bilingual certification + a coaching stipend. Across the board teachers are underpaid to start off, but it you stay in the profession you will make good money, and my state of California has a very good pension system. There's a reason why teaching is among the most common professions for millionaires.
That being said, you need to basically hop around until you find a school to stick with. Having admin that will either have your back or give you space helps tremendously. Also stay away from the teacher's lounge no matter what you do, people pretty much just go there to complain. It's a similar story for social media groups directed for teachers. /r/teachers is a horrible place for example. It will wear you down to engage with these places.
Oh no so the same problems of any other job except instead of shit kids and shit parents the rest of us deal with shit customers and shit suppliers. What walk-in-the-park job are you thinking of in comparison?
These "live comfortably" numbers are ridiculously high. College professors with a PhD don't even make that much until they get tenure and we are all living just fine and some even support a family on that salary.
That data is a bit suspect - somehow, the “minimum salary for a single person” for most states is 80-90k in LCOL areas. Every single state has higher “minimum salaries” than the median household income of the United States, which means that the median household, aka of half of Americans with potential kids is making not enough money to support a single person???!
The numbers are insanely high for everywhere except California and a few HCOL states. As a result, it shows that California is “more affordable” and places like Arizona “less affordable”, because somehow 97k is the minimum salary for a single person in Arizona, somehow equivalent to $110k in California.
Even Arkansas is 90k. Texas is 80k. These “minimum salaries for single people” are not minimum in any sense of the word.
Data is very misleading... cost of living is very regional and cannot just be broken up by states. Cost of living in New York City is different than cost of living in Albany or Buffalo. Cost of living around San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego is much higher than elsewhere in the state.
Teachers should be paid more... especially those that have masters degrees or PHDs. It should be comparable to a masters or PHD in another specialized field. But it would be much better to do this on a county by county basis, and is possible to do so I am sure.
Some of these “Live Comfortably “ numbers are just ridiculous.
86,000 is more than what you need to live comfortably in Louisiana. Including the “expensive” cities like New Orleans.
Meanwhile, some dingleberry kicks a ball across a field and they get more money in a year than these teachers will see in a lifetime.
The world is backwards.
All I know is that within five years, my area’s housing market literally doubled in price, rates doubled in price, and my income got its first raise in fifteen years. A standard one bedroom apartment within the city limits where I work rents at 40% of my net income before factoring in utilities and food and any other costs related to renting. Add in gas, car payment, student loan payment, and medical bills, and it adds up fast. Retirement length was just increased to 31/32 years until I get my pension, and I’m a late starter in the field.
So: perhaps roommates will work so rent is 20-25% of income. Then I can downgrade to a cheaper used car for the lowest payments available. I can work at a title 1 school for five years so my student loans are forgiven if the job board matches up with my search. Perhaps I can date and marry someone to get dual incomes, and that whole process takes funds and dedication. In the meantime, I can’t consistently cover emergencies, expensive medical bills, travel, recreational expenses, moving costs, work expenses, car problems, paying down any credit card debt, etc.
It’s a lot of scrambling, any maybe that’s fun or some “adversity breeds growth” thing for those new to their out of college careers, but for me it’s just frustrating. I don’t want to spend my evenings and weekends working a second job to supplement my income because I want to be a good teacher, and I spend a lot of time after school to improve my craft and finish tasks. The job is emotionally taxing and my weekends are my time to recoup my energy. I don’t foresee a housing market that ever really goes down, inflation of goods and services is noticeably affecting prices, gas is expensive, family lives out of state, and the list goes on. Perhaps slow growth with a chance of timing markets will happen.
The best option is to use a teacher’s flexible schedule to expand personal skills and eventually exit the career. Generally speaking, all this is a lot of work and requires a lot of long term planning to get the numbers lined up.
> The Average US Teacher Earns $26,468 Less Than Needed to Live Comfortably in Their State
People have different interpretations of "living comfortably". To some people, anything less than $1M is bad.
📈 It's almost like those living comfortably figures are just theoretical constructs that ignore individual circumstances and the real cost of living, huh?
They get sooo much fucking vacation time lol. They can make up the difference with a part time summer teaching gig and still have more time off than anyone
The average teacher also only works 75% as much as the average full time employee. Not trying to be rude, I’m just a bit jealous. If you make 80k as a teacher that equivalent to $104k if you worked 100% of the year. I know most make less than 80k, but I’m still jealous.
For how many more generations are teachers going to complain about being underpaid... at some point, perhaps people thinking about teaching should take note and do something else.
Switched careers from education to play the game of capitalism. It's been several years and I still am uncomfortable with how much easier this work is and how much lower the stakes are. I always joke that "in my previous job, the worst possible crisis would be a child dying on my watch. Here, it's just pissing some business person off with a delayed timeline." This world is so backwards...
Teaching isn't a full time job so why should we expect it to pay enough to 'live comfortably'?
And before you shit all over me and downvote me - my mom was a teacher as is/was something like a dozen members of my family. I know how HARD they work but I also know how often they work. It's not 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year.
Nice well they also get 1/4 of the year off and commonly a pension so they can work for it.
This is, solely, a fault of higher education and corruption in education. No one should need a masters degree to do what an afterschool program employee does.
¼ of the year? Most teachers are contracted for around 180 days. That’s 6 months if I mathed correctly. If they want to make $100k, they need to work the entire year like everyone else does.
If they got paid for the amount of time they spent bitching about their pay, they’d all be rich. If it stinks, do something else. That’s what the rest of us have to do.
Thank goodness market forces have revealed US teachers are compensated fairly based on the market saturation of the pool of teachers.
Edit: read as national teacher shortage
What the hell is this crap?
The minimum salary a single person needs to live comfortably in Ohio is $80,704.00? So I suppose a couple in Ohio making $160,000 is not living comfortably?
Shit, let's just set it to a million dollars a year while we're wildly making up big numbers. Now everyone is poor!
Oh yes, more teacher horror stories.
Im a teacher and make twice the median income of my community.
By the logic here, also more than half of people in America dont have enough income to “live comfortably.” Which may be true, but a bit misleading
Before being scared off from the profession, actually look at the payscales and make an educated choice about your career.
I love teaching and live very comfortably doing something i’d probably almost do for free
Our employment is pretty safe and i get great medical/dental plans, and a pension
This could be resolved very easily if they traded their retiree health and pension benefits for higher salaries, but nobody wants to have that conversation
The “”live comfortably” metric is just made up nonsense. It’s like maxing your savings and not squeezing your budget anywhere, which is. Ompleteñt unrealistic. It was made up by a financial planning firm for clicks.
Ah another Teacher post in Data is Beautiful filled with hot takes of your average redditor taking the Teacher 40 years into their career with 2 masters degrees as an example of how teachers are not underpaid. When in reality the majority of teachers are going to school. Ending up 50k plus in debt then working a job with one of the highest turn over rates in the States for less than 50k annually. "BuT thEy WoRk 8 MonThs OuT of The Year".
/u/heallikewolverine, thank you for your contribution. However, your submission was removed for the following reason(s): * **Website infected with malware https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/https/hessunacademy.com/us-teacher-wage-gap-report-2024/** This post has been removed. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the DataIsBeautiful [posting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/dataisbeautiful&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/heallikewolverine&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20[submission.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ded677/-/\)))
That color scale is unfortunate.
Yeah, this isn't really "data is beautiful"
I mean they are pretty colors I guess...but not having purple between dark purple and pink, and then have red thrown in the middle is just a poor decision.
That is the worst set of colors I have ever seen in a display of data. At the very least it should go dark to light so that there is an intuitive interpretation that matches the data.
Two of them are about equal though - one is a blue purple and the other is a red purple
unique shelter close workable racial whole bewildered fact innate wise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Let me get out my Crayons to compare ...
Utterly hilarious that this part of a legit report *from a homeschool resources organization*, and not just a brilliant troll attempt
it is data presented by a company that sells tutoring service. they want it to be scary, not informative, so you pay their company to teach your kids.
Yeah and I don't know why you would do CoL on a state level. GA for instance is set at $96k for a single adult to live comfortably. That might be true in metro Atlanta but not in like... Tifton
Usually isn't
the sub sucks for data clarity
At this point we should probably just have a data is data sub
Data is beautiful is anything but
Seriously, did they just assign 4 shades of purple at random? Medium > dark > medium > light
Probably some executive insisted the brand color (1) needed to be omni-present and (2) insisted that the exact brand color be the best/most favorable.
I just checked: purple is their brand color You are wise poingly.
I have worked in design long enough to know these edicts.
I’m usually against heavily-moderated subs, but maps and infographs with color scales this insanely bad should be removed.
It's reddit's fault for upvoting it just because of the subject rather than the data presentation. This post is on /all.
It reminds me of mixed berry skittles.
What color scale?
steep cough versed detail start busy merciful rhythm concerned light *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
it was made by an underpaid teacher
Their table CSS column-width, too - can't fit 2 characters without a newline is 🤌
Thank you for teaching me a euphemism for “stoopid”
Right???! Whoever decided it is an idiot.
Color scale? WTF happened to the Great Lakes? I immediately question the validity of any of this information. Also, I get that teachers are often underpaid. But most of the people I know make less than those "comfortable living" thresholds.
I need $101k to live comfortably in Oregon? TIL I'm impoverished, apparently.
This reflects a 50/30/20 budget, which is 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings. It’s an inflated measure of what it means to be comfortable.
It’s not inflated a lot of people just don’t want to admit they’re kind of poor. Poor doesn’t mean destitute, you can be poor and have a place to live, always have food in the house, have fulfilling but inexpensive hobbies, etc. a lotttttt of people in the us are kinda poor, due to the widening class divide and all. if you’re not properly saving for retirement, or you have to check your budgeting app to figure out if you can afford to go to that cool event in your city, how comfortable are you really? That 50/30/20 rule didn’t pop up out of nowhere
This is exactly it. Most people don't recognize that *most people can't afford to retire* without cutting back their lifestyles to the absolute minimum. It's very common for lifestyle expenses to rise too much for retirement -- this is because most people don't feel comfortable living on a budget that is similar to living paycheck-to-paycheck. Only a relatively small 30ish percent of people in North America have enough to maintain a reasonable lifestyle, have children, *and* retire successfully. Over 50 percent cannot have all three.
A lot of people don’t want to admit they are blowing their cash on coffees and DoorDash and are actually doing at least alright. I think a lot of people are further from the brink of collapse than they think. Or should be if they had better habits. Not everyone, but a lot of people
To me, poor means that you are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. As in, I need to pay rent so I won't be going to the grocery store. > or you have to check your budgeting app to figure out if you can afford to go to that cool event in your city, how comfortable are you really? Why not broaden your scope? If you can't afford to vacation out of your country every summer, or if you can't own the car that you want, or if you fly less than 4 times a year, how comfortable are you? I feel like I'm very comfortable, but I'm still driving an 8-year-old car...
The 20 didn’t pop out of nowhere. It’s a very common rule of thumb for saving, and well supported historically. The 50 / 30 split is less common, and was apparently popularized by a 2006 book by Elizabeth Warren. Many other budget suggestions are 70 10 20, 80 10 10 - but the 80 includes needs and wants, and the extra 10 is charity, 60 20 20 etc. effectively the 50 / 30 does pop out of nowhere. I also disagree that needing to consider budget for cool events is a sign being anything short of comfortable Being able to do whatever without considering a budget is historically unexpected, and beyond the comfortable into the “we’re not rich, just ‘comfortable’ level of comfort expectation.
It’s a reasonable measure of what’s needed. Now, I don’t think they are factoring in dual income households. So like, a teacher could make… 1/2 of $101K, or about $50.5K, if their partner makes that.
These numbers are explicitly for single adults
Then it isn't the average us teacher at all but a specific person they have designed towards.
Even reading the article, I missed the key point that, “if you select someone living in the worst case scenario, it’s not good.”
Not needing half your net income is well beyond comfortable.
Assume it means saving as well since pensions are non existent.
I don't think I agree. Comfortable doesn't mean "I can live without constant stress." Comfortable means "I can lose my job and seek for a job in my industry for a month or two without compromising my retirement." The number of people who satisfy that is very small in modern day America. Most of us are just 1 disaster away from pushing retirement back several years.
Any budget that included 20% savings would meet your definition though, the 30% wants category is what makes this budget more than comfortable. It seems like a single adult working full time should be fairly comfortable spending more like 10-15% of their income on wants, which would reflect the common gut reaction that the average teacher can have a comfortable life in most states, note - average is average not all a not poor school districts, not newly graduated teachers, not those with significant student debt (as loan payments would suck up more than their wants budget has) etc. When data is presented like this, it fundamentally makes many people not trust the ideas at all. The underlying calculator used to develop these salaries - https://livingwage.mit.edu/ uses typical costs, to determine the needs budget which don’t scale accurately at all and which already include the wants budget. So it takes 80% of the income needed, and calls it 50%, then says you need 30% of the new inflated amount for wants. However some of the assumptions of this calculator are based on Two adults anyway, which understates the income. Basically the methodology itself is barely math and the numbers are therefore meaningless.
Apparently we need to make nearly $250,000 to live comfortably with our two kids in Minnesota, even though we’ve been doing so with less than half of that (and put plenty into investments). Those numbers, and therefore this article, are complete BS.
They're claiming $106k to live comfortably as a single adult in WA. That's enough to raise a family on!
$95K to live in Illinois, you can live very nicely anywhere in Illinois for $95K, you can live like a king anywhere south of I-80
According to these "standards" numbers only the top few percent of earners are living comfortably.
This data is horrendous. The source of "comfortable" living assumes a 50-30-20 ratio of needs, wants, and savings. The most egregious error is the assumption that MIT's Living Wage Calculator only represents needs, so they doubled it, even though it already includes many forms of entertainment.
Also that just because your fixed expenses are higher doesn’t mean you need to save more and spend more on fun items. Higher taxes doesn’t mean I need to buy more stuff on Amazon lol
Yeah, I’m pretty sure their “salary for one person” exceeds the median household income in most if not every state
I'm pretty sure this is click bait and probably owned by OP
Yeah the data is stupid and not beautiful. The “minimum” income is somehow a top 25% income in each state except California. What sort of single person needs like 150% of the household income of their state just for themselves.
and only works 180 days a year where a normal worker works somewhere around 240-250.
Yea this is pure manipulation of data to get a particular result. I'm all for teachers' getting paid more; by and large they deserve it. But this is just bad proganda with a terrible color scheme.
Yeah a quick google tells me that the average teacher [makes about 58k](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary), which is actually 10k over the [median personal income](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/14/median-annual-income-in-every-us-state.html) Maybe teachers *should* get paid more but when you make your argument like this, it doesn't help your case.
Looked at the state I live in (with 2 kids) and it says that a single person would need to make roughly 5k more than myself and spouse make combined…. We aren’t middle class and saving is a struggle but jesus the numbers are just wrong lol
Oh, if you click through to the source for those numbers they have some values for a family with two working parents that are truly eye popping. Apparently my household should be bringing in a quarter million a year.
Can't believe I had to come this far down for someone to call BS on the "comfortable living" figures. First comment was colors. I mean I get that it's "Data is beautiful" but let's occasionally challenge the data as well.
This reflects a 50/30/20 budget, which is 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings. It’s an inflated measure of what it means to be comfortable.
Even then, the numbers would be highly inflated, at least in my state (NE). A single person’s “needs” are not ~30k anywhere here, which is 50% of the amount stated after accounting for taxes.
Also a good point, I got worked at the low hanging fruit and didn’t even dig to that.
Living cost is extremely regional, plotting it at a state level is misleading to begin with. Not to mention, the "minimum salary for a single adult to live comfortably" is exceedingly high. $82k in Mississippi? Really? This is the kind of shitty information turning into a shitty map with unreadable color scales. Unfortunately, most Redditors just vote by the title and never bother to read the content.
Yeah, let's take Illinois. 95k living wage. Chicago? Sure. Burbs? 30+ min from Chicago that's comfy. Downstate? You can literally buy homes for 25k. Plus the variance in districts is massive. My son started his teaching career in a poor suburb. He now teaches in a wealthy suburb, 2 years later. At the poor district, kids were sharing books and he bought multiple kids lunch every day because they couldn't afford it. Current one has the student parking lot with cars I've never heard of. Despite being the top teacher in the poor district, with multiple bonuses and every extra they could throw at him, he now makes over 25k more and is one of the lowest paid teachers at the rich district school. 25 miles difference between them.
$95K for a single person in the city, they can live where ever they want, it's not even close to a hardship -that said L1S1 for CPS is over $60K which is still not bad for a single person in the city. What a difference going from the south side to the north side.
The listed "minimum salary for a single person to live comfortably" values are quite high. I am at my personal peak income with 10yrs of experience in my field. And I'm still making solidly less than the "live comfortably" rate for my state. Even so, I've had my student loans paid off for ages, I've got a house in a good neighborhood (suburb of a major city) that's half paid off, and I've never had to have a roommate to split costs. By all accounts, I'm living the American dream, financially. And yet apparently I'm poor? Am I missing something?
They took MIT's living wage calculator, ignored a lot of the data, averaged the rest, doubled it, them made the result about teachers for some reason.
> for ~~some reason~~ for reddit karma
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Not only that, there’s no mention of the fact that teachers work ~9 months of the year. It would be much more accurate to compare what 9 months look like for everyone else, and include total compensation: pension + the additional pay some teachers opt for by working summers
The are 180 school days per year, less in some states. The typical career person has 250 working days. It seems like someone who works 28% fewer days should be paid accordingly.
People completely hand-waive this fact….
Lmao the amount it says a single person needs to live comfortably in VA is $100,000. Fucking delusional.
The thing is that they're averaging over entire states, which usually gives you poorly representative figures. It's including urban areas, which represent a majority of the population but a minority of the area, making large swathes of rural America seem expensive when they're really dirt cheap. Like in Illinois for example, you can be comfortable off $40k in the middle of nowhere with a rent under $500, but Chicago may be a different story. The state-wide figure is going to wind up being somewhere between.
I can't imagine there's anywhere in Alabama you need 80k to be comfortable. Teachers salaries are probably lower than they should be in most places, but this strikes me as setting an arbritary high bar for agenda based reasons.
Yeah this is obvious nonsense. The median *household* income is $74k across the entire US and $59k in Alabama. But a single earner living in Alabama needs $82k to be “comfortable”?
Cocaine and crawfish is fucking expensive
Cocaine is underweighted in the cpi if you ask me
These types of articles are always nonsense. Half-assed attempt to mash some statistics together to match up with a clickbait headline.
Even so, you don't need $111k a year as a single person in NYC. I guess everyone has a different idea of "comfort"
We have numbers averaged across the entire US population - household income - which is 67k. That number can even include 2 incomes. A minimum salary of 80-100k in the US for a single person suggests earning six figures should be the average, but that is far from the truth.
Most people live in cities like you note, so I don't see that as big of a problem as you do. But, these numbers and the methodology behind them is just totally out to lunch. Also doesn't factor in pensions for teachers needing less than the already high 20% for savings... and no I'm not saying teachers aren't underpaid in America, they definitely are.
Meanwhile, the Chicago teachers union has bargained for average teacher pay at $93K now, with many making well into the six figures. 25 year olds with roommates and a 4-year degree making $100K... Bizarre chart and methodology, if you ask me.
The rate they chose is more than the median HOUSEHOLD income in I think every state, so really not sure where they pulled these numbers from. That said I'm in NJ and I don't think my wife and I were in the "comfortable" standard of living until we were making around $120k a year. That is about the range we could afford a 1bed/1bath apartment in the city we lived in, go out regularly and still save some money. It was still relatively modest living but comfortable. That said, not everyone lives in the shadow of NYC here.
Going out regularly isn’t a requirement for living comfortably. That’s a luxury.
I make over the single adult limit, but my wife and I are *well* below the frankly insane $200k they say it requires to live comfortably in my state. I know maybe 4 people in this state, which I left for only a decade and otherwise have spent 30+ years in, who make enough to "live comfortably" per this site.
Those numbers are for a single adult. It's significantly less expensive for a couple than it is for two single people because there are a lot of shared costs, you can't just double the single adult limit and call that the "married limit" (something which is never even mentioned in the article) and then use it to say the numbers are "frankly insane".
This isn't what I'm doing - I am literally using the breakdown they use. Their family income requirement is well above the single income. Ohio: Single "living comfortably": ~$80k (I make significantly more than this and am a very high earner for my area) Family "living comfortably": ~$200k (this seems insane to me) Median wage in Ohio is about $45k Source is linked within the article, but here it is for convenience https://smartasset.com/data-studies/state-salary-living-comfortably-2024
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I was going to say 87k for Texas is way too high. It may be like that in Austin but you can live in the H and be comfortable making 60k a year if you live correctly.
Agreed. Houstonian teacher here. At 10 years. I make $74k. Paid off student loans. Paid off mortgage. Ima penny pincher to the max and live in a rough neighborhood. For CoL and comfortability, I am living great.
You are not missing anything. This is not beautiful. This is just bull shit.
Apparently you need 90k to live comfortably anywhere. I can assure you I've been comfortable on a lot less. Maybe comfortable means a new Tahoe every 5 years too.
Only teachers can be underpaid, everyone else is overpaid. How much are their unions paying for the constant propaganda?
Yea they are much much higher than they should be. My state has listed $79k for comfortable lifestyle and it’s more around $38k. So no clue what these numbers mean
>The listed "minimum salary for a single person to live comfortably" values are quite high. Just looking at CA where I live: the listed salary is >110k. Going by a '1/3 of gross for rent' gives you 2,750 USD per month for rent. In most places in CA you will be able to find a one BR apartment for that. If you live with roommates then you can do that basically anywhere.
That people who claim that you are "poor" if you earn just $100k while living in the Bay Area are delusional and stuck by lifestyle creep. The cost of living there is high, but not that high. And yes those people exist, they always show up on reddit when that is discussed.
So true about lifestyle creep. People will just overpay for things constantly (bars, restaurants, expensive hobbies, etc) then complain that they’re poor here and it couldn’t possibly be their fault lmao. Then there’s all the people who wasted money going to an extremely expensive private college then being surprised when they get out to see they’ve got high 5 figure debt to deal with afterwards. Yet with 2 years at community college then 2 at state school you end up with exactly the same degree and usually a much larger network of connections… hmm…
I live in the Bay Area but a decent way from SF. I do live within a couple miles of a BART station. In 2019 1 BR apartments were renting for 1.6k and now there are some at 1.8k. These are the fairly basic apartments. Calculating back to the amount you need to make gets you to ~65k and that is before taxes. You should be able to earn that and live in a 1BR in my area. It won't be a nice 1BR. If you can do roommates then it is lower. I also find the 'teachers massively underpaid' narrative to be strange (both of my parents were teachers). Teachers get the whole summer off, get pensions, don't have to deal with normal office stuff, and have really high job security. People are drawn to teaching for those reasons. The wages are a bit low for the education needed but people go into it because of the other benefits. I have seen other calculations on teacher pay and if you look at the fine print they assume that teachers work 10 or 11 hour days, this just isn't the case.
I think there is a fair point in saying teachers are underpaid. I've seen a chart comparing teacher salaries to other professions that require a college degree, teachers were much lower. There were two other lines for comparison, the average of all other professions that require a college degree, and the average for female dominated fields. Female dominated fields was lower than total average but teachers were even lower. It's hard to get competent people to be teachers when they can make a lot more money working with anything else, you're basically relying on people doing it for love at this point.
FWIW, teachers in some places really are massively underpaid. Teachers in other places are actually paid quite well for the hours worked (even after you account for things like buying classroom supplies). E.g. go look up Chicago Public Schools salary schedules. They are a little complicated to track all of the steps and lanes involved, but an established teacher gets paid pretty well considering the number of days they are expected to work and the qualifications required to get the job. https://ctulocal1.github.io/salaries/20200724_finalized_Teacher_Pay_Schedule.html Steps refer to the number of years of experience, lanes refer to the level of education. Both steps and lanes increase every year (so next year you will be one step higher AND get the annual bump). A teacher in their early 30s with 10 years of experience and a BA working a 208 day year would get paid 79.4k plus a pension pickup that brings their total comp to 85k (with pretty good benefits AND summers off) in 22-23. In 23-24, the same step would have a comp of 87.4k...BUT that person has one more year of experience so they go up a step and earn 90.3k. Sometimes they try to get sneaky there--they will say the contract only gives a 2.8% raise because that's the increase YoY, but they neglect to mention that everyone goes up a step and the real raise was 6.3%. Now what happens if the teacher goes and gets a easy and inexpensive masters degree over the summer (you could get a hard and expensive one if you want, but the contract doesn't care). That bumps them up a lane to 95k. You can do some additional credits of study to bump up another lane. I think that's pretty fair pay for someone who is like 33 years old with a job that's not super hard to get, They'll be over 100k in another year or two. I'm not saying it is not a hard job, but that's a pretty good deal. Although it makes me feel EXTRA bad for teachers in (usually red) states that pay them half that to teach in similar schools.
Of all the 50 states, this article has $78,790 as the lowest "Min. Salary for Single Adult to Live Comfortably".
Whoever came up with that needs a personal finance lecture for dummies
$80k+ to live "comfortably" in ANY state in the US? I call BS. What are they considering? 80k for one person is living pretty large in most places other than the coasts maybe.
I lived comfortably on 70k in the bay area, one of the most expensive cost of living areas in the country. I don't have kids of course, but if their metric is a "single adult" then their numbers are hilariously inflated and disconnected from reality.
They usually are
They are considering comfortable as 50% of your income on needs, 30 on wants, and saving investing 20.
This is pretty biased and another example of people using this sub to push an agenda. “Living comfortably” is tremendously subjective and they’ve just pulled that definition out of thin air based on arbitrary definitions. They’ve said it should mean spending 50% of income on necessities (eg rent, food), 30% on discretionary spending (eg vacation, dining out) and saving 20%. That’s a VERY comfortable lifestyle - most people will tell you it’s normal to spend 30% on rent alone so this is a much better-than-average level of financial security. What their math says is they to “live comfortably” you need to earn something like *$90-100k ANNUAL SALARY*. Median individual income in the US is $48k, so they’re saying teachers should make *DOUBLE* the average person. They’ve just used this creative framing because if they came out and said “teachers should make double average salary” or “teachers should make $100k” people would reject the idea as nonsense (because it is). That doesn’t even get into the matter of claiming teachers (by their framework) should be saving 20% annually for retirement (which is very high) despite the PENSION they have which effectively already offers them a very comfortable retirement income without requiring them to do any personal retirement savings. This is asking to have your cake and eat it too - to have a luxe pension while also being paid like you don’t. This feels a lot like paid promotion for teachers unions disguised as objective unbiased research / writing.
There's also the fact that many teachers only work 9 months out of the year. The salary looks a lot better when you take that into account. Not to say it couldn't be better and in some cases definitely should be. (mom is a teacher, wife was a teacher, I was a teacher).
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Well said.
In California though, most teachers have it pretty good. The average pay in our local district is $120K, retirement (with pension) at age 60 and cadillac health insurance for $100/month.
Same in Washington state.
Whenever things like this are posted, the "comfortable living" line is based on a whole lot more than basic living. >This cost of living was calculated based on the popular 50/30/20 budget rule, which breaks down expenses into necessities (50% of income), wants (30% of income), and savings/debt repayment (20% of income). So this takes what you need to exist, doubles it, then says that's the minimum to be comfortable. I find that excessive. My bills took up 60-65% of my income for a while and that wasn't exactly uncomfortable. I don't say this as a way of saying teachers **aren't** underpaid, but to point out that people seem to be able to make data say anything they want by changing the metric by which it is judged.
And teachers make more money then most people. So the average person is even worse off than this.
This was my takeaway. In a two income household it's okay for one to be a lower earner and you can make it if you aren't dumb with your money. I do feel for all the single people trying to make it out there.
There are two ways you can interpret this: 1. A sizable majority of Americans are, in fact, impoverished. 2. The cut off they chose for “comfortable” needs to be reevaluated. Which do you think is more likely?
Option 2. If the rest of the world can survive on far less, then the US can stop acting so impoverished on their throne of wealth. Comfortable means luxurious for too many people. That said we do need to work on our wealth inequality, we should strive for a larger middle class, instead of our trend of continuing to give more and more money to the upper class.
In my city, a single person can easilly live comfortably on what they have listed as the teacher's salary, let alone what they think is necessary.
They're defining living comfortably as spending 50% of your income on needs, 30% on wants, and 20% going to savings.
that’s pretty nuts. by that definition, one individual working 2 and a half days a week would cover the expenses of an entire household…….. this has never been the case, nor is it the case anywhere across the world.
Dang these are some high numbers for a person to live comfortably alone. You definitely don’t need to make over $95k a year as a single person to have a comfortable life in PA. So I guess the question is, what constitutes “living comfortably”?
Teachers in the blue states (CA is over $95k - for 9 months of work - so if you annualized it, then they would make over $120k) make pretty good bank. I would also say the “Min. Salary for Single Adult to Live Comfortably” number is unrealistic and in most cases too high. You don’t need to make $113k to live comfortably in CA, unless you need to live by the coast. This smells like data-tweaking.
I should have been a teacher.... I make 20-30k. I've worked for local government for ten years with my psych and soc degree. Working food service now has me earning what I averaged with local government and social services work. It's pathetic. But I have more free time.
These salaries are more twice the median income. This is total nonsense.
What are taxes for? Teachers dont get it. The roads are shit. Police take 10-20 minutes to show up. Wtf are we paying for exactly?
Road maintenance is actually [bankrupting American cities](https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0?si=jZwSAzeHU-e6Ue_-). They’re [financed by debt](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/26/roads-and-debt) that is usually paid by the expectation of city growth which often is done by building more roads that will need more maintenance in the future…
Yup suburbs are 2x as expensive in the long term and it's getting to be the long term.
You don’t think all those politicians became multimillionaires on government salaries do you?
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Mostly administrators and other supporting roles
A huge military. And I think you pay less tax than most advanced developed nations.
That’s federal and schools are funded at the state level. We also spend more on social security and Medicare individually than the DoD, by a lot.
We pay less taxes than the rest of the wealthy world. Our military is also the smallest it’s been as a share of gdp in decades. It’s the low taxes that starve our public services.
Thanks for the correction on the military.
You weren’t wrong we do spend more of our gdp on the military than other wealthy nations. But the difference isn’t big enough big enough to explain the difference in civilian public spending.
[Here's a pie chart](https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_386_high_dpi/public/2023-09/4-14-08tax_rev9-28-23_f1.png?itok=ZY1DAcJN)
That’s the budget for the federal government which does not employ teachers
>Here's a pie chart Teachers and police are largely financed at the local level--school districts for teachers specifically. That 1% for police is almost all FBI, DEA, etc. That 4% for ED is mostly federal grant programs like Title I and Pell Grants. Does that Education budget include the federal school lunch program? No, because that's a USDA program and thus would be counted in Ag. Dept's budget. Head Start? That's an HHS program. Roads are a mix of federal, state, and local. So if you're looking to see a big piece of pie for "Teacher pay" in the federal budget, then you won't find it because that number is $0. Maybe that's part of the problem. But it's somewhat misleading to point to the federal budget. More so bc Fed. budgeting is filled with historical quirks and compromise that make it unintuitive. Not to say that $7B for an aircraft carrier that's still not combat ready isn't insane, but not the right budget. For a more oranges to oranges comparison, here's a breakdown for the [City of Los Angeles](https://openbudget.lacity.org/#!/year/2023/operating/0/department_name?vis=pieChart) and the [LA Unified School District.](https://my.lausd.net/opendata/dashboard?language=en) 16% of LA City's budget is for policing. 38% of LAUSD's budget is for teacher salaries.
The data I saw from LAUSD was total, not broken out. How did you get it to just salaries?
Right tab, "Finance." "K12 Instruction" is like 99% teacher salaries for non-special education teachers.
Thank you! 2.7B or about half the K-12 budget is what I'm now seeing, which is a lot better than the 20B I originally saw lol
Social Security, Medicare and the Military…those are your biggest expenses.
So do most people, and they're paid based on 2000 hours worked a year, not 1600.
What are the actual salaries of the teachers? How does it compare to the median salaries in the states? That is a far better indicator of actual teacher situations. Most people in America cannot afford to live comfortably.
That smart asset comfortable living calculator is horrible. 113k to live comfortably as a single person in California. In the Bay Area? Sacramento? Out in some tiny town? It would be much more useful to compare teacher salaries in cities (and rural areas), and compare their salaries to the median salaries of other local residents.
I live in Colorado and 103,000 is more than comfortable. That would be more than enough to buy a house in most suburbs. Maybe in downtown Denver that would be a lower end salary. But this is incredibly flawed stat to say 103,000 is what is needed to live comfortable. I know plenty of people working jobs from barber to pastor making around 60-70 thousand dollars and they live fine. I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve more. My cousin just got a full time teaching gig without a degree because of the shortage. So I think the qualifications for teacher are going down, but in a way that is helping because a teaching gig without a degree isn’t a bad job anymore. I think the real question is with what we are paying teacher are we getting a good education?
So do almost all Americans
So tired of hearing about this topic. Teachers are paid exceedingly well for the amount of time they actually work.
"APRIL 25, 2024 – Nationally, public school spending per student rose 8.9% from $14,358 in FY 2021 to $15,633 in FY 2022" The average class size is 20 students in the US. That's $312,660 per classroom. California, it's $600,000+ per classroom. It's not an income problem, it's a spending problem. The media will not give you this simple explanation. Best Government money can buy.
I think you might not be aware of what it costs to run any large org, even in private companies with 0 government subsidies. Let me put it this way, on average for an office worker you cost about twice as much as your take home pay. A lot of the times this isn't even just counting the cost of your benefits but the physical cost of having an office with a parking lot in a decent area. Schools feel this even more, since because your dealing with children there's a lot of regulation. Maximum class sizes, nurse availability, sports programs, subsides lunch programs, etc. etc. etc.
What changed? Obviously, the beurocracy has increased in the last 50 years. We have 7 layers in California. The average teacher has 30k in benefits and retirement on top of their pay. What regulations have changed? More lawyers and politicians getting rich? Subsidized lunch program is the USDA, and that's year round. Hence, more beurocracy. California spends more $$ per pupil. Why is it one of the worst educational systems in US? Best Government money can buy.
It’s honestly surprising how many teachers there still are considering how shit of a job it is. Dealing with shit kids, or shit parents, shit administrators, long hours, and shit pay.
Well the idea is that they're part of a household with two incomes. But often it doesn't turn out that way. Income disparities due to jobs and childcare can create struggling households and teachers. Also they used single adult metrics but most adults don't make 100,000 a year which is what this states. The idea that we should be paying remotely this much especially accounting for rural vs urban differences is actually insane and shows how poorly this article is written.
Lol please work 9 months a year. often have salary over 100k protected by a union government mandated salary increases increases for furthering education supported by charity driven parent groups ...if anything they've become complacent and the threat of privatizing is going to screw many generations out of quality public education
I live in a different world as a high school history teacher. The kids want to learn history, they're engaged, and I can mix up lesson plans. Math and English have it much, much harder. Older students are much easier to deal with in my experience. I also coach baseball so done teaching by 1:30. Weekends off, holidays off, winter and summer breaks. I'm paid very well, although I have a master's degree + bilingual certification + a coaching stipend. Across the board teachers are underpaid to start off, but it you stay in the profession you will make good money, and my state of California has a very good pension system. There's a reason why teaching is among the most common professions for millionaires. That being said, you need to basically hop around until you find a school to stick with. Having admin that will either have your back or give you space helps tremendously. Also stay away from the teacher's lounge no matter what you do, people pretty much just go there to complain. It's a similar story for social media groups directed for teachers. /r/teachers is a horrible place for example. It will wear you down to engage with these places.
Oh no so the same problems of any other job except instead of shit kids and shit parents the rest of us deal with shit customers and shit suppliers. What walk-in-the-park job are you thinking of in comparison?
Doesn’t seem like teachers are very smart to choose a career with so many negatives. The brightest aren’t teaching our children.
These "live comfortably" numbers are ridiculously high. College professors with a PhD don't even make that much until they get tenure and we are all living just fine and some even support a family on that salary.
That data is a bit suspect - somehow, the “minimum salary for a single person” for most states is 80-90k in LCOL areas. Every single state has higher “minimum salaries” than the median household income of the United States, which means that the median household, aka of half of Americans with potential kids is making not enough money to support a single person???! The numbers are insanely high for everywhere except California and a few HCOL states. As a result, it shows that California is “more affordable” and places like Arizona “less affordable”, because somehow 97k is the minimum salary for a single person in Arizona, somehow equivalent to $110k in California. Even Arkansas is 90k. Texas is 80k. These “minimum salaries for single people” are not minimum in any sense of the word.
There should be no people going into or staying in teaching if this is true.
Data is very misleading... cost of living is very regional and cannot just be broken up by states. Cost of living in New York City is different than cost of living in Albany or Buffalo. Cost of living around San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego is much higher than elsewhere in the state. Teachers should be paid more... especially those that have masters degrees or PHDs. It should be comparable to a masters or PHD in another specialized field. But it would be much better to do this on a county by county basis, and is possible to do so I am sure.
That’s not even close to being enough
Some of these “Live Comfortably “ numbers are just ridiculous. 86,000 is more than what you need to live comfortably in Louisiana. Including the “expensive” cities like New Orleans.
"HEUR:Trojan.Script.Balada.gen"
I’ve never really understood this. Teachers work 9-10 months of the year. Is that accurate?
Teacher in NC checking in. The data for my state is laughably inaccurate.
Well that's why they need to get summer jobs..
Meanwhile, some dingleberry kicks a ball across a field and they get more money in a year than these teachers will see in a lifetime. The world is backwards.
All I know is that within five years, my area’s housing market literally doubled in price, rates doubled in price, and my income got its first raise in fifteen years. A standard one bedroom apartment within the city limits where I work rents at 40% of my net income before factoring in utilities and food and any other costs related to renting. Add in gas, car payment, student loan payment, and medical bills, and it adds up fast. Retirement length was just increased to 31/32 years until I get my pension, and I’m a late starter in the field. So: perhaps roommates will work so rent is 20-25% of income. Then I can downgrade to a cheaper used car for the lowest payments available. I can work at a title 1 school for five years so my student loans are forgiven if the job board matches up with my search. Perhaps I can date and marry someone to get dual incomes, and that whole process takes funds and dedication. In the meantime, I can’t consistently cover emergencies, expensive medical bills, travel, recreational expenses, moving costs, work expenses, car problems, paying down any credit card debt, etc. It’s a lot of scrambling, any maybe that’s fun or some “adversity breeds growth” thing for those new to their out of college careers, but for me it’s just frustrating. I don’t want to spend my evenings and weekends working a second job to supplement my income because I want to be a good teacher, and I spend a lot of time after school to improve my craft and finish tasks. The job is emotionally taxing and my weekends are my time to recoup my energy. I don’t foresee a housing market that ever really goes down, inflation of goods and services is noticeably affecting prices, gas is expensive, family lives out of state, and the list goes on. Perhaps slow growth with a chance of timing markets will happen. The best option is to use a teacher’s flexible schedule to expand personal skills and eventually exit the career. Generally speaking, all this is a lot of work and requires a lot of long term planning to get the numbers lined up.
> The Average US Teacher Earns $26,468 Less Than Needed to Live Comfortably in Their State People have different interpretations of "living comfortably". To some people, anything less than $1M is bad.
I'm finding that it's either impossible to live "comfortably" or you're wealthy.
And with these metrics 85% of people are 30k+ short of comfortable living, turns out not everyone can live like a king, who woulda guessed.
📈 It's almost like those living comfortably figures are just theoretical constructs that ignore individual circumstances and the real cost of living, huh?
If I only worked 2/3rds a year I would too....
As a single male in Utah. I do not need 93k to live comfortably... Even if I made 50k I could live comfortably, and I live downtown in the city.
And they work 9 months out of the year so that Summer job = 1/4 of their salary….
They get sooo much fucking vacation time lol. They can make up the difference with a part time summer teaching gig and still have more time off than anyone
The average teacher also only works 75% as much as the average full time employee. Not trying to be rude, I’m just a bit jealous. If you make 80k as a teacher that equivalent to $104k if you worked 100% of the year. I know most make less than 80k, but I’m still jealous.
they work 180 days a year
For how many more generations are teachers going to complain about being underpaid... at some point, perhaps people thinking about teaching should take note and do something else.
Switched careers from education to play the game of capitalism. It's been several years and I still am uncomfortable with how much easier this work is and how much lower the stakes are. I always joke that "in my previous job, the worst possible crisis would be a child dying on my watch. Here, it's just pissing some business person off with a delayed timeline." This world is so backwards...
TBH, given the product they produce, they’re overpaid.
This is how the united states collapses lmao
That site is one giant ad. Gross
Teaching isn't a full time job so why should we expect it to pay enough to 'live comfortably'? And before you shit all over me and downvote me - my mom was a teacher as is/was something like a dozen members of my family. I know how HARD they work but I also know how often they work. It's not 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year.
More intentionally messing up the beauty of data presentation to get attention! I knew it! This is an epidemic people! #uglybeautyattentionseeking
Nice well they also get 1/4 of the year off and commonly a pension so they can work for it. This is, solely, a fault of higher education and corruption in education. No one should need a masters degree to do what an afterschool program employee does.
¼ of the year? Most teachers are contracted for around 180 days. That’s 6 months if I mathed correctly. If they want to make $100k, they need to work the entire year like everyone else does.
If they got paid for the amount of time they spent bitching about their pay, they’d all be rich. If it stinks, do something else. That’s what the rest of us have to do.
Thank goodness market forces have revealed US teachers are compensated fairly based on the market saturation of the pool of teachers. Edit: read as national teacher shortage
What the hell is this crap? The minimum salary a single person needs to live comfortably in Ohio is $80,704.00? So I suppose a couple in Ohio making $160,000 is not living comfortably? Shit, let's just set it to a million dollars a year while we're wildly making up big numbers. Now everyone is poor!
Oh yes, more teacher horror stories. Im a teacher and make twice the median income of my community. By the logic here, also more than half of people in America dont have enough income to “live comfortably.” Which may be true, but a bit misleading Before being scared off from the profession, actually look at the payscales and make an educated choice about your career. I love teaching and live very comfortably doing something i’d probably almost do for free Our employment is pretty safe and i get great medical/dental plans, and a pension
This could be resolved very easily if they traded their retiree health and pension benefits for higher salaries, but nobody wants to have that conversation
The “”live comfortably” metric is just made up nonsense. It’s like maxing your savings and not squeezing your budget anywhere, which is. Ompleteñt unrealistic. It was made up by a financial planning firm for clicks.
Ah another Teacher post in Data is Beautiful filled with hot takes of your average redditor taking the Teacher 40 years into their career with 2 masters degrees as an example of how teachers are not underpaid. When in reality the majority of teachers are going to school. Ending up 50k plus in debt then working a job with one of the highest turn over rates in the States for less than 50k annually. "BuT thEy WoRk 8 MonThs OuT of The Year".
They also don’t work in the summer.
For 9 months of work. Not saying teachers aren't underpaid, but it is good to remember that they can get summer jobs too.