Occupation / job
Social Work 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 $77,570 against a $50,020 midpoint, Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary pays $27,550 a year more than the typical American job — $13.24 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 Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary is 12,610 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.
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 Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $61,170 and a quarter above $100,400: a 1.6x ratio, $39,230 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 Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary earns $61,170 or more — $11,150 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 need a permanent post at the end; a great deal of this teaching is done on contracts that are not.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 12,610 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
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $77,570 as where you might be after years in Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary, and $61,170 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary runs $61,170 to $100,400 — $39,230 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $77,570.
Between $61,170 and $100,400 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $77,570. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $22,830; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $39,230.
The climb from $77,570 to $100,400 is $22,830, against $16,400 down to $61,170. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary is $37.29 an hour. The quarters sit at $29.40 and $48.26, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
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 Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $77,570 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $77,570 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else