Expect to read a lot about teacher pay over the next couple months. The contract between New York City and its 79,000 teachers expires next week.
During that debate you’ll mostly hear of one type of figure — annual salary — and that’s a shame because it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Allow me to explain.
The first problem is the time period. People don’t actually work years. They work hours. And the number of hours that people work per year varies immensely, which helps explain differences in their “annual” salaries.
Indeed, according to the definitive numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker who has graduated from a 4-year college works 2,250 hours per year. Teachers, by contrast, work about 1,100 hours.
How can the number be so low? Well, schools only operate 180 days a year and the average teacher is out “sick” 10 days a year. Multiply 170 days per year by the 6.5 hours that a typical teacher works per day and you have 1,105. (BLS figures include work at home as well as work at school or office.)
So if you want to compare how teachers are being compensated for their efforts, you have to start by mentally doubling their salaries because they only put in half as many hours.
But that’s not the only big problem with the annual salary measurement.
The other major problem is that annual salary doesn’t consider benefits. As of December 2008, benefits paid to government workers across the country cost an average of $13.38 per hour. (Private sector benefits cost an average of $7.98 per hour.)
I cannot find any numbers for New York State let alone teachers in the New York City region, but given that the national figure includes all those red states where government workers don’t even get pensions, the numbers in true-blue places like New York have to be twice as high, if not three times as high.
So add another $30-$40 in per hour compensation and let’s make some comparisons.
A 30-year-old engineer who has climbed into the lower ranks of management and pulls down $110,00 per year makes just under $57 an hour in total compensation. A poor teacher who makes $65,000 makes somewhere between $89 and $99 an hour, depending on how you want to estimate benefits.
Now total compensation per hour isn’t the only important number. To some degree annual salary matters because the items that people need to buy — houses, cars, etc. — must be paid for in cash. (Yes, you could borrow money, but you have to repay your debt in cash.)
But total compensation per hour is a hugely important number. Work is essentially the sacrifice of leisure for gain, and teachers gain far more than most workers for each hour they sacrifice.
But don’t expect to read much about that while contract negotiations are going on.
