Occupation / job
Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
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
At $79,350 against a $50,020 midpoint, Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary pays $29,330 a year more than the typical American job — $14.10 an hour. Nothing pays that much more for free, and the thing it is paid for is what you should be reading about.
Employment as Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary is 19,830 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
These posts suit people who genuinely enjoy explaining a field to people encountering it for the first time, every year, to a new set of them.
No verified preparation time is on file for Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary. 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 earn below $62,510 and a quarter above $102,730: a 1.6x ratio, $40,220 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The bottom quarter of Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary earns $62,510 or more — $12,490 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 cannot afford a long training period that ends without a guaranteed permanent post.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 19,830 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $62,510 and $102,730 this is a normally shaped occupation. $79,350 is what the middle of Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $62,510 at the 25th percentile, $79,350 at the midpoint, $102,730 at the 75th. $40,220 separates the quarter of Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $102,730, the 75th percentile, is worth $23,380 a year more than the $79,350 midpoint and $40,220 more than the $62,510 a quarter of Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary settle for.
The climb from $79,350 to $102,730 is $23,380, against $16,840 down to $62,510. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $38.14 at the midpoint for Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary, $30.05 at the 25th percentile and $49.38 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary. The self-employed are excluded, so $79,350 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary, the hourly figure is $79,350 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