Occupation / job
Psychology 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
$80,340 is $2,526 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
Employment stands at 41,530. Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Psychology 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
$63,400 to $105,920 — 1.7x, or $3,543 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
At $63,400, or $30.48 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $13,380 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 the administrative and committee load would spoil the subject for you, because it is a large share of the week.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 41,530 figure counts people already working as Psychology 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
1.7x between $63,400 and $105,920 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $80,340 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
The middle half of this field earns between $63,400 and $105,920. That is $42,520 of range, with $80,340 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $105,920, the 75th percentile, is worth $25,580 a year more than the $80,340 midpoint and $42,520 more than the $63,400 a quarter of Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary settle for.
The climb from $80,340 to $105,920 is $25,580, against $16,940 down to $63,400. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary is larger than the realistic downside.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $30.48 at the bottom quarter, $38.62 at the midpoint, $50.92 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $80,340 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary, the hourly figure is $80,340 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