Occupation / job
Teaching Assistants, 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
The $42,910 midpoint for Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary sits $7,110 under the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is a real living across much of the country and a thin one in expensive metros, so geography decides this more than seniority does.
National employment is 164,090. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
Instructional support roles suit people who want to work with students without carrying the planning, the assessment and the parental contact that the teaching post carries.
We carry no verified training length for Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$25,240 separates the bottom quarter of Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary at $35,270 from the top quarter at $60,510. At a 1.7x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.
A quarter of the field earns under $35,270 — $14,750 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if you need year-round income; these posts commonly follow the school calendar and stop when it does.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 164,090 figure counts people already working as Teaching Assistants, 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
At 1.7x, the distribution for Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $35,270 to $60,510 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.
The middle half of this field earns between $35,270 and $60,510. That is $25,240 of range, with $42,910 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $60,510, the 75th percentile, is worth $17,600 a year more than the $42,910 midpoint and $25,240 more than the $35,270 a quarter of Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary settle for.
From $42,910 the drop to $35,270 is $7,640 and the climb to $60,510 is $17,600. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $20.62 at the midpoint for Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary, $16.95 at the 25th percentile and $29.09 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $42,910 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 Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary, the hourly figure is $42,910 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