Lawrence Mishel

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Lawrence Mishel President Economic Policy
Institute
Conference Teachers Compensation, Career Paths,
and Collective Bargaining Dover,
Delaware November, 2007
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Introduction

• Consensus that high quality teaching is central
  to improved student outcomes.
• Recruiting and retaining quality teachers is
  therefore critical. Professional development,
  too.
• Compensation is major expense and altering pay
  schemes to address various challenges seems
  reasonable

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Introduction

• Most people and policy analysts - across the
  political spectrum - agree that teachers are paid
  less than those in comparable jobs. Two
  prominent exceptions are Greene and Podgursky who
  claim that teachers are actually quite well
  compensated when hours/weeks of work and benefits
  are taken into account.

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• Teachers aren't underpaid
• The case that teachers are underpaid is a
  weak one. Teacher pay is actually quite
  reasonable when considered in context.

Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy
studies at the American Enterprise Institute,
Policy Review, Apr-May 2004
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Outline

• The long view, 1960-2000
• Comparison of weekly wages, 1979-2006
• Comparable occupations to teaching
• The fringe benefits issue
• So What?

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• Focus on
• How does teacher pay compare in 2006?
• How has that changed over last ten, 30 and 50
  years?

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• The Long View
• 1960-2000

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Annual wage premium of female public school
teachers, 1960-2000
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Change in public school teacher annual wage
premium, 1960-2000
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Analysis of Weekly Wages1979-2006
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Weekly wages of public school teachers and
non-teacher college graduates with BA, 1996-2006
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Weekly wages of public school teachers and
non-teacher college graduates with MA, 1996-2006
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• Lets Look at Wages
• Adjusted for Education,
• Experience and Other Factors

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Public school teacher wage premium, by gender,
1996-2006
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Change in public school teacher weekly wage
premium, 1979-2006
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• Benchmarking
• This erosion of teacher relative pay is evident
  regardless of the data used, with annual or with
  weekly wages

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Change in female teacher weekly wage premium by
age range, 1996-2006
Senior (45-54)
Middle (35-44)
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Occupations Comparable to Teaching
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Ratings of Ten Dimensions of Job Content
KNOWLEDGE SUPERVISION RECEIVED GUIDELINES COMPLEX
ITY SCOPE AND EFFECT PERSONAL CONTACTS PURPOSE OF
CONTACTS PHYSICAL DEMANDS WORK ENVIRONMENT
SUPERVISORY DUTIES
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Occupations Comparable to Teachers
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Teacher wages relative to comparable
occupations,1996-2006
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Comparison of teachers and comparable
occupations, 2006
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Change in teacher weekly wages relative to
comparable occupations, 1983-2006
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The Fringe Benefit Issue
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Shares of total compensation, teachers and
professionals, 2006
Note that Basic Wages are what the National
Compensation Survey publishes. W-2 wages are
comparable to what the CPS publishes.
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Estimating the Benefits Bias, 2002
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Benefit Bias
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The Problem with National Compensation Survey
Hours and Weeks Data for Teachers
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• NCS Flaw
• For teachers, BLS uses scheduled hours per week
  (36.5) and weeks per year (38)
• For other professionals, BLS reports weeks worked
  and weekly hours worked

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BLS Agrees

• the futility of comparing salary estimates for
  periods of less than a year between two
  occupations with very dissimilar work time
  requirements over the year and for whom the
  annual leave entitlements are unknown Because
  the published NCS wage estimates do not reflect
  leave entitlements and the work years of teachers
  are so dissimilar from most other professional
  occupations, I would only use the annual salary
  estimates from NCS to compare teacher pay with
  the pay of other professionals.

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BLS Web Site

• When compared with other occupations the hourly
  earnings for some occupations, such as teachers
  and airline pilots, seem higher than expected.
  Why is this?
• Answer Hourly earnings are just one means of
  comparing the wages of different occupations
  Unfortunately, this method may not work well for
  certain occupations with unusual hours. Teachers
  who often work only 9 or 10 months per year are
  an example of this problem.. In occupations such
  as these, total work hours may have to be
  estimated. Because of these issues, comparisons
  of annual salaries published by the National
  Compensation Survey (NCS) might be more
  appropriate when considering certain occupations.
• Source http//www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/peoplebox.htmQ
  01

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• So What?

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• Wide agreement that teacher relative wages are
  low and falling
• Somehow, policy discussions seem to overlook this
  fact

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• For men, relative salaries fell between 1940
  and 1960 but then remained roughly constant. For
  women, relative salaries began highabove the
  median for college-educated womenbut fell
  continuously. The changes are easiest to see for
  young teachers, but they hold for teachers of all
  ages, meaning that growth in late-career salaries
  did not offset the decline in salaries for
  younger teachers.
• Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin, Spring 2007

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• Yet for all this union political influence,
  teacher pay, relative to that of other
  occupations, has been slipping downward for
  decades. In 1940, female teachers made better
  than 60 percent of what was earned by the average
  college-educated woman by 1990, they were
  earning hardly 40 percent. Among males, salaries
  slipped from 52 to 33 percent of the
  college-educated average.
• Paul E. Peterson, "If Their Unions Are So
  Powerful, Why Are Teachers Not Better Paid?"

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This material draws on the findings inHow Does
Teacher Pay Compare?Methodological Challenges
and AnswersBy Sylvia A. Allegretto, Sean P.
Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishelpublished by the
Economic Policy Instituteand the update being
released in December 2007

• See at
• http//www.epinet.org/content.cfm/books_teacher_pa
  y