State teachers far from being number 1 in pay
GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
Arizona Mirror
Teachers in the Grand Canyon State face the second-worst pay gap in the country, earning a third less than other college-educated employees.
The most recent teacher pay analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that Arizona teachers earned 33.2% less last year than other workers with college degrees did, placing the state just behind Colorado’s 37.4% gap. That’s a jump from 2021, when Arizona ranked 4th worst and the cause, according to the report’s authors, has a lot to do with the economy.
In 2022, the inflation rate was at 8.8%, the highest spike since 1981. Abysmal inflation rates have the effect of canceling out any pay increases, but the salaries of private sector workers and teachers respond differently.
The average weekly wages of teachers plummeted by $128 from 2021 to 2022, while other workers saw little to no change. Part of that has to do with how their differing pay structure works: private sector salaries can adjust to economic conditions as needed, but teacher pay is dependent on contracts and government budgets.
And in Arizona, a state which has long underfunded public education and only recently begun approving record funding increases, the deterioration of teacher pay has snowballed. The state has been struggling with a teacher shortage since at least 2016. The latest analysis from the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association reported in September that as many as 6,000 classrooms lacked a qualified instructor well into the first month of the academic year.
