Occupation / job
Philosophy and Religion 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 $80,260 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary pays 60% more than the typical American job — $30,240 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
20,460 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
Postsecondary teaching suits people who want to keep working on a subject for decades, and who accept that the route in runs through years of training with no guarantee of a permanent post at the end.
We carry no verified training length for Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $62,600 and a quarter above $104,770: a 1.7x ratio, $42,170 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.
At $62,600, or $30.09 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $12,580 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if you cannot afford a long training period that ends without a guaranteed permanent post.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 20,460 figure counts people already working as Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.7x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $80,260 as where you might be after years in Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary, and $62,600 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $62,600 at the 25th percentile, $80,260 at the midpoint, $104,770 at the 75th. $42,170 separates the quarter of Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $104,770, the 75th percentile, is worth $24,510 a year more than the $80,260 midpoint and $42,170 more than the $62,600 a quarter of Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary settle for.
$24,510 separates $80,260 from the $104,770 top quarter, while only $17,660 separates it from $62,600. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $38.58 at the midpoint for Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary, $30.09 at the 25th percentile and $50.37 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $80,260 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary, the hourly figure is $80,260 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