Occupation / job
Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education pays $63,970 against $50,020 across all occupations — $1,162 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
At 1,388,390 workers, Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education is one of the largest occupations in the country. Jobs at this scale are the labour market’s floor — always hiring, rarely bidding, and first to absorb people leaving somewhere else.
This work suits people who can plan a year, deliver it daily and adjust it hourly, in front of an audience that has no obligation to be interested.
No verified preparation time is on file for Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education earn under $57,710 and a quarter over $81,450 — 1.4x, or $23,740 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
The bottom quarter of Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education earns $57,710 or more — $7,690 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Three quarters of the field is well paid and the last quarter is still paid better than most of the country.
Avoid it if you could not absorb the hours outside the timetable, which are real and unpaid.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 1,388,390 people employed as Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
$57,710 to $81,450 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
The middle half of this field earns between $57,710 and $81,450. That is $23,740 of range, with $63,970 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $81,450, the 75th percentile, is worth $17,480 a year more than the $63,970 midpoint and $23,740 more than the $57,710 a quarter of Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education settle for.
The top quarter of Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education begins $17,480 above the $63,970 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $6,260 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education is $30.75 an hour. The quarters sit at $27.74 and $39.15, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education. The self-employed are excluded, so $63,970 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education, the hourly figure is $63,970 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else