Occupation / job
Geography 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
$97,590 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 95% more, or $22.87 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.
With 3,330 employed nationally, Geography Teachers, Postsecondary is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Geography Teachers, Postsecondary — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $74,690 to $123,900 is $4,100 a month, or 1.7x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
Even at the 25th percentile Geography Teachers, Postsecondary pays $74,690, $24,670 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.
Avoid it if the administrative and committee load would spoil the subject for you, because it is a large share of the week.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 3,330 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 1.7x between $74,690 and $123,900 this is a normally shaped occupation. $97,590 is what the middle of Geography Teachers, Postsecondary earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $74,690 and $123,900. That is $49,210 of range, with $97,590 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $74,690 and $123,900 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $97,590. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $26,310; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $49,210.
$97,590 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $22,900 above the bottom quarter, $26,310 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Geography Teachers, Postsecondary is $46.91 an hour. The quarters sit at $35.90 and $59.56, 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 Geography Teachers, Postsecondary. The self-employed are excluded, so $97,590 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Geography Teachers, Postsecondary, the hourly figure is $97,590 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