The United States is starving for more teachers. In a study from the Learning Policy Institute, an education-focused think tank, researchers found that the U.S. is facing one of the biggest teacher shortages in history.
"Our analysis estimates that U.S. classrooms were short approximately 60,000 teachers last year," Leib Sutcher, the study's co-author, told reporters. "Unless we can shift these trends, annual teacher shortages could increase to over 100,000 teachers by 2018 and remain close to that level thereafter."
Even though teachers are in incredibly high demand, their compensation remains relatively low. In order to figure out where teachers are best able to get by, data scientists analyzed Indeed salary data to identify the metro areas among the 25 largest with the highest average salaries, then adjusted for cost of living using the most recent information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read on to see the 15 cities where teacher salaries go the furthest:
15. Orlando, Florida
Average salary: $44,197
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $45,170
14. Dallas, Texas
Average salary: $46,624
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $46,624
13. Los Angeles, California
Average salary: $58,990
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $48,608
12. Detroit, Michigan
Average salary: $47,112
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $48,714
11. San Francisco, California
Average salary: $63,364
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $49,488
10. Houston, Texas
Average salary: $50,028
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $49,578
9. Atlanta, Georgia
Average salary: $47,825
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $49,690
8. Austin, Texas
Average salary: $49,717
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $49,966
7. Memphis, Tennessee
Average salary: $46,679
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $50,910
6. San Jose, California
Average salary: $67,075
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $50,910
5. San Antonio, Texas
Average salary: $48,970
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $51,712
4. Richmond, Virginia
Average salary: $50,587
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $52,560
3. Seattle, Washington
Average salary: $59,174
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $53,612
2. Sacramento, California
Average salary: $57,274
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $55,785
1. Riverside, California
Average salary: $62,192
Average salary adjusted for cost of living: $58,025
Riverside California topped this list as the metro area where teacher salaries go the furthest. According to Indeed's data, teachers in Riverside make $62,192 on average, but given that the area has a relatively high cost of living, Indeed calculated that their adjusted salary is closer to $58,025.
Five Californian cities cracked the top 15, in part due to the fact that the average salary for a teacher in the golden state is a respectable $69,324 a year. The reason more Californian areas didn't make the top 15 is because of the relatively high cost of living. California's Housing and Community Development Department found that one in three Californians spends over half of their income on housing alone.
Richmond, Virginia, is the highest ranking area where a relatively low cost of living allows teacher salaries to go further than expected. The same can be said of San Antonio, Memphis, Austin, Atlanta, Detroit and Orlando.
In 2008, the National Center for Education Statistics found that 92.4 percent of teachers spent an average $450 of their own money to pay for school supplies for their students. More recent studies suggest that today teachers spend even more. This practice is just one more reason that cost of living and purchasing power are vitally important for our nation's educators.
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