Household Income Percentiles for 2000 to 2012

I recently talked about a survey of Americans asking who felt they were in the middle class vs lower or upper classes.   There has been a large increase in the percent of us who think that we're in the lower class.   I wondered if incomes have plummeted for a large portion of Americans or if this was more of a perception thing.

I found detail on household incomes for each fifth at the Census. 

H1 table - Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households

Here's what it looks like from 2000 to 2012 :

Thats not too bad looking but now lets look at it in real dollars:

That doesn't look so good.   Incomes are down from 2000 in real dollars in every fifth as well as the top 5%.

Its hard to see detail on the bottom 3 fifth groups given the scale so I'll show those groups separately: 

There you can see more clearly the drop of real incomes for the bottom 60% of people.

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Income Distribution by Education Level

You can often find median or average wages for the different education attainment  levels.   But I wondered how the distribution of wages looked for each.    I mean are they all pretty symmetrical distributions at each education level?   Or might it be flatter at the lower education level and wider distribution at the higher education levels?

I pulled income levels for education level off the BLS database for 
Table 5. Quartiles and selected deciles of usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by selected characteristics, quarterly averages, not seasonally adjusted

Here's the income distribution based on education level :

	10%	25%	Median	75%	90%
Dropout	$15,236	$18,616	$24,544	$33,020	$47,112
High school	$18,772	$24,856	$33,852	$48,724	$68,744
Bachelors	$27,508	$38,844	$57,616	$85,488	$120,952
Advanced	$35,360	$49,244	$72,228	$104,572	$155,116

And then as % of median :

	10%	25%	Median	75%	90%
dropout	62%	76%	100%	135%	192%
High school	55%	73%	100%	144%	203%
Bachelors	48%	67%	100%	148%	210%
Advanced	49%	68%	100%	145%	215%

Overall I would say that the income distributions don't vary a whole lot based on education level.   The top 10% makes roughly double the median and the bottom makes 50-60% of the median.    The bottom 10% wage level is supported by the minimum wage so that may explain why its a little higher % of median than other education levels.

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Income verus Wealth

Are high income people 'rich'?      Not necessarily.     Sometimes however we see income used interchangeably with wealth.   For example a news story might talk about 'rich' or 'wealthy' people but only cite income statistics but not net worth.    This is a point that Free Money Finance has complained about in the past.   Income is not the same as wealth.     You can for example have someone who makes 6 figure income but has negative net worth, like maybe a new doctor with high student loan debts.   And you can also have people with relatively low incomes but very high net worths, like a retiree with a very large nest egg built over a lifetime.

 However there is a pretty high correlation between income and wealth.   Most low income people aren't rich and most high income people are not poor.  There are always exceptions but if you look at the statistics the trends are quite clear.    I decided to see what kind of information I could find to show the tie between income and wealth.    Can we look at a high income and assume that person is wealthy?   How likely is a high income household to also have a high net worth?

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has info on income and assets in one place.
You can also find discussion of the topic in the Federal Reserve paper Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2007 to 2010: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances Table 4 on page 17 has the net worth data per income group.

Here is the data out of the most recent SCF for 2010 (figures in thousands):

income percentile	median income	median net worth
Less than 20	$       13	$       6
20–39.9	$       28	$     26
40–59.9	$       46	$     66
60–79.9	$       72	$   129
80–89.9	$     113	$   287
90–100	$     205	$ 1,194

Focusing on the top 10 % income group we can see that their median income is $205k and their median net worth is $1,194k.   Half of the people in the top 10% make under $205k and half of them make over $205k.  There is no upper limit on that group so the top .001% makes a very large annual income.   We also know that half of the people in the top 10% have net worths making them millionaires and then some.  This does not however mean that people who make over $205k are all millionaires.   There are some millionaires in the 90-95% group making under $205k and some non-millionaires in the 95-100% group making over 205k.    In fact the net worth of the people in the top 10% income bracket could range from severely negative to billions.    And any income percentile group will have a range from bankrupt to millionaires and then some.    I doubt there are any billionaires in the bottom income bracket but theres certainly many millionaires.  

Looking at the median net worths tells us that 50% of the people in each group has more or less than that amount.   So for the bottom 20% of income earners 50% of them have net worths of less than $6000 and 50% of them have net worths over $6000.     Then at the top 10% of income earners half are below $1.194M and half are above $1.194M.

 While income doesn't really tell us what someones net worth is, we can say that most people with incomes over $200k are millionaires.

Now if we drop down to the top 20% we have a median income of $113k and the 80-89.9% group has a median net worth of $287.    That group seems much less likely to be millionaires.   I'm certain there are a good number of millionaires in that income group but we don't know what portion of those people are millionaires.  
 

I don't have more information on how net worth varies  within given income groups.  I tried to find that but couldn't come up with anything.   It would be nice to have a better distribution of net worth values for each income level.   But we'll have to make due with just the median figures.  

SCF 2010 also has the percentiles of net worth (in thousands):

Percentile of net worth	median	mean
Less than 25	-	$   (13)
25–49.9	$     32	$     36
50–74.9	$   157	$   169
75–89.9	$   483	$   528
90–100	$ 1,864	$ 3,716

So that shows us a little of how net worths are distributed but not related to incomes at all.

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Income by Select Occupations over Time

A little while  ago I watched a documentary on cable called American Teacher.   The documentary was about teaching in American and was generally pro-teacher.  But the point that I found interesting was a chart they showed in the middle of the film that compared teacher wages to other professions.   They claimed that real estate brokers and lawyers had significantly higher income growth over the period than teachers.   The numbers seemed a bit off to me.

I thought that wage trends over time for different occupations would be an interesting topic to explore.   I know the general income for my occupation where I live has gone up abut 50% in the past 15 years.   On the other hand my fathers occupation has been virtually flat for the past 15 years in his home city (though he's now retired). 

I set out to find income figures per specific occupations over several decade period.  It was pretty hard to find good consistent data breaking down income by occupations.    I looked all over the Census site to find a good list but it seemed the data they collect changes a bit over time.    I was at least able to find a hodge podge of tables that give me numbers for some common occupations.  

I couldn't find consistent data and some of its not really comparing equal information.  But I think its close enough to get an OK idea of wages for the occupations in question.  
Data for 1978, 1983, 1987 and 1992 are from the Census Consumer Income reports.  Annoyingly they seem to only give income for males or females but not the combined population so I'm using the numbers for males.   The 1999 data is from the Census page.  2005 is from BLS OES and 2012 is the current BLS OES.    For BLS data I and used hourly wage x 2000 wages as an estimate of annual median wages.   For the first few data points the figure for 'lawyer' is actually including judges but the later years is lawyers only, so that means that the income figures for the lawyer category are actually measuring different set of people.    For engineers I first had a general category for all engineers but then they split them up so I picked just electrical engineers which seem to be closer to the middle of income for engineer specialties.   The teacher incomes are annual averages in the later years because they didn't have median hourly rates.   Teachers are almost all paid salary and theres little variation in wages.

So let me be clear, the charts and data are pretty flawed due to my mix matched data sources with inconsistent numbers.  Almost makes this exercise futile.

Here is the income over time from 1978 to 2012 :

(click image for full size)

And here is how the income for each occupation grew from 1983 to 2012:

(click image for full size)

I only had a few data points from 1978 so I didn't include that year in this chart.

It just so happened that the occupations I sampled all grew faster than wages in general.  I suspect thats because many many low skill service jobs make up a larger portion of the employment and those wages haven't grown as fast compared to the jobs I sampled which are mostly skilled professional occupations.

Carpenter, Nurses and teachers grew the fastest.  However part of that may be a fault in my methodology of pulling together miss matched sources.    Both occupations had high jumps from 1999 to 2005 and thats when I went from a census table to the BLS figures.   Median hourly  wages x 2000 may not be very accurate approximation for median annual income for some occupations versus others.   For example carpenters tend to have higher unemployment during economic downturns and may have seasonal unemployment due to weather.   School teacher wages jumped 50% in my chart from 1999 to 2005 and I'm pretty sure thats not right and must be the difference in what I'm reporting from the different sources.   Lawyers didn't grow as fast as other professions but I started out with data for lawyers and judges and then ended up with only lawyers and I'm sure judges pulled up the initial numbers so makes it look like they haven't grown as fast.

Again, I have to point out that the numbers are not very great.   If I can find better data I'll revisit the topic.  For now we've got a set of data with some flaws.



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OES Maps - Number of Jobs and Wages by State or MSA

Lets say you're starting or thinking of starting a career in a particular job and you are wondering how many jobs there are in your area or other parts of the country.   For example lets say you've read that petroleum engineering is a good job and you live in Hawaii.   Are you likely to get a petroleum engineering job in Hawaii?  Well no.   But where can you get such a job?  Where are the jobs?   Some occupations have ample jobs in every region and every state: elementary school teachers for example are employed everywhere in the nation.   However some jobs are mostly concentrated in certain states or even certain cities.     In addition to knowing where the jobs are you'll also likely want to know how much people get paid in different areas.

You can use the BLS' Occupational Employment Statistics maps to find out what states have the most jobs in a given occupation as well as find wage data for the jobs.

The map generator lets you pick a general occupation field, then a specific occupation and then show the employment, quotient or wages by state or MSA.

For example we can do so for Aerospace engineers :

Say for example you're an aspiring aerospace engineer, can you get a job in Wyoming or Idaho or Maine?  Not too likely.    But if you're interested in living in California or Washington then you can find a lot of jobs in those states.

Now it is also useful to drill one level deeper and look at metropolitan statistical areas  (MSA).   When we do that for Aerospace we see those jobs are really limited to certain cities :

If you want to find wages you can do that too.   Here's the wages for elementary school teachers by state :

If you go to the actual OES site and look at a map there you can get the specific numbers per state by hovering your mouse over an individual state.    For example if you want details on teacher wages in Wyoming you can see that :

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Hodge Podge : Tax Estimator, Medical Cost lookup and Median Incomes & Rents

Here are three interesting sites that I've ran across.   They are all useful or interesting.   These were sitting in my pile of stuff to write about but didn't warrant a article on their own so I figured I'd post about them all together...

Estimate Your Tax Bill : TurboTax's TaxCaster This one is pretty useful to figure out your rough income tax bill.   You can also use it to model how different changes would impact your taxes.   Its smart enough to know what you can and can't claim based on your tax levels.

Get Average Medical costs: FairHealth's medical cost lookup
You can look up specific medical procedures by ZIP code.   It gives estimated costs in your area for various procedures and it figures both the insured costs and uninsured costs.

Median Income & Median monthly rents by Census tracts: Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks
You can put in your address and find the median rents in your area.   This is handy for setting rents or market research for rentals.   You can also look up median income levels which is more for curiosity sake.  I found it interesting to see the huge differences in median incomes in various areas of our town.


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Infation versus Wages for 2002 to 2011

I've seen a couple blogs talking about wages versus inflation.   Theres a concern lately that wages aren't keeping up with inflation.   Personally every individuals wages and expenses take different paths so what matters to you is your own wage history and your own spending.    Looking at national averages really only gives a very abstract situation.  Still you don't want the national situation to be negative in general.

I got data on wages and inflation from the BLS.

Here's how the wage and benefit costs have changed annually versus inflation :

The cost of wages and the cost of benefits are different for employers.   Employees usually only really look at or even see the wages portion.   You know your hourly pay or salary.   However most employees also get substantial compensation via benefits which our employers pay for.   The cost of the benefits to employers may include reduction in benefits, so the % cost here isn't too useful from the employee perspective.  

If you just look at wage change minus inflation change then its still been generally positive :

If you add up the cumulative changes from 2002 to 2011 then wages went up about 28.5% on average and inflation went up about 26.9%.   The total for the latest 3 years shown isn't as great from 2008 to 2011 wages were up 8.1% but inflation rose 8.4%.   So we lost a little ground in the latest 3 years.

 Of course these numbers don't mean much to an individual who may or may not have gotten a wage increase.   Also the numbers don't really say what the  "average raise" was but instead show the average in wages paid.   Theres a difference there.   A 3% increase in wages doesn't mean people got 3% raises, but that total wage spending was up 3%. 

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Manufacturing Compensation in USA versus Other Nations

The United States has a very large manufacturing industry which has been on the rebound in recent years.   While manufacturing has grown in China and other lower cost nations in many ways in recent decades, the manufacturing base in the US is still large.   Our wages and benefit costs for manufacturing are relatively high compared to many countries but still significantly cheaper than some nations.  In fact the compensation costs in the US are cheaper than 15 other nations.  

The data is from the BLS report INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF HOURLY COMPENSATION COSTS IN MANUFACTURING, 2011   (PDF version)    Note that the numbers are more than just hourly wages.   The report covers compensation costs which include wages, benefits and some tax related costs too.   You can dive into the full BLS report for more details and a break down of benefit costs too.

Here are the hourly compensation figures per nation :

(click image for full size)

You'll note that China and India are not on that chart.   The BLS report explains this is due to inconsistent or poor data from those nations but it does cover the compensation for them in 2007 or 2008 and its around $1-2 range.   Its likely grown since then as well, but they are both still quite low.

It may be more interesting to see how much each nation has changed from 1997 to 2011.  

(click image for full size)

There we see the U.S. has increased less than everyone but Taiwan.   Costs in the U.S. are still high relative to most of the world but many nations are catching up while our costs grow slower.


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Retirees Have Higher Income Per Household Member

Here's an interesting fact: The income per household member is higher for people over age 65 compared to the amount for households under age 65.

The numbers are from the Census Table HINC-02. Age of Householder--Households, by Total Money Income in 2011, Type of Household, Race and Hispanic Origin of Householder 

The income per household member for people age 65 or old is $28,330.    For households under age 65 the income per household member is $27,152.

I previously rote about retiree income levels and pointed out that "Median household income for people over 65 years is just $33,118 compared to a median of $50,054 for the entire population."    But households for people over 65 generally have fewer people in them so the income per household member is higher than the general population of people under 65.    Households over age 65 average about 1.77 people while households under age 65 average 2.77 people.    Median income of $33,118 for people over 65 seems bad compared to median income of $50,054 for households under 65 but its not so bad when you keep in mind that the households over 65 have 1 fewer people to support.

The numbers for income per household member are all average figures so they are skewed higher by the people with high earnings. 

Breaking it down by various age groups we see the income trends :

Age group	Income per member
15 to 24	$15,509
25 to 29	$21,541
30 to 34	$22,492
35 to 39	$22,944
40 to 44	$25,368
45 to 49	$28,288
50 to 54	$33,110
55 to 59	$36,511
60 to 64	$35,483
65 to 69	$33,212
70 to 74	$28,930
75 and over	$24,002

And here that is graphically :

If you look at the income levels per household member the difference between people in their peak working years and the retirees isn't so drastic.   Income levels per household member for older retirees over 75 years old is significantly less than the peak earning years of 55 to 59.   I assume the drop off in incomes for people over 75 is due to people whos pension or retirement benefits haven't kept up with inflation or whos other incomes have dwindled.


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Teacher pay versus Firefighter pay by State

Who makes more: teachers or firefighters?    In most places teachers have higher average wages but in some states the firefighters come out ahead.    Nationally elementary teachers average $55,270 and firefighters average $47,720.   In general teachers make more than firefighters nationally.   But some states thats not the case.

I pulled the average wage numbers for firefighters from the May 2011 State Cross-Industry estimates at the BLS Occupational Employment Statistics pages.  The teachers salary figures are from the Teachers Portal.

Heres all the data showing the average annual wages for teachers versus firefighters :

	teachers	firefighters
Alabama	$47,803	$39,200
Alaska	$62,918	$50,910
Arizona	$47,553	$44,010
Arkansas	$46,500	$34,810
California	$67,871	$71,030
Colorado	$49,228	$53,900
Connecticut	$69,165	$55,740
Delaware	$57,934	$45,490
Florida	$45,732	$50,770
Georgia	$52,815	$37,110
Hawaii	$55,063	$53,030
Idaho	$47,416	$34,260
Illinois	$64,509	$47,300
Indiana	$50,801	$45,040
Iowa	$49,844	$38,700
Kansas	$46,598	$39,750
Kentucky	$48,908	$32,670
Louisiana	$49,006	$31,670
Maine	$47,182	$31,720
Maryland	$63,960	$57,220
Massachusetts	$70,752	$49,240
Michigan	$63,940	$44,430
Minnesota	$53,680	$33,760
Mississippi	$41,975	$31,120
Missouri	$45,321	$41,740
Montana	$47,132	$41,520
Nebraska	$47,368	$41,900
Nevada	$53,023	$57,830
New Hampshire	$52,792	$43,080
New Jersey	$66,612	$70,160
New Mexico	$46,888	$35,280
New York	$72,708	$61,240
North Carolina	$46,605	$31,540
North Dakota	$44,807	$46,610
Ohio	$56,715	$42,550
Oklahoma	$44,343	$36,780
Oregon	$56,503	$57,810
Pennsylvania	$60,760	$48,920
Rhode Island	$60,923	$48,340
South Carolina	$47,050	$32,920
South Dakota	$39,850	$39,060
Tennessee	$45,891	$36,950
Texas	$48,638	$45,530
Utah	$47,033	$29,290
Vermont	$50,141	$35,550
Virginia	$48,761	$47,810
Washington	$52,926	$63,040
West Virginia	$44,260	$33,870
Wisconsin	$54,195	$31,040
Wyoming	$56,100	$49,780

I highlighted the states where firefighters make more.  

I'm sure theres a ton of reasons that wages differ between the occupations across states.   Demographics will play a role.   Its possible some states have a lot of younger or older people in one occupation who earn low or high wages based on experience.   Work hours and conditions may vary as well.   We don't know if teachers in a given states work 160 days or 180 and if they have average class sizes of 18 kids or 30 kids.   Same kind of thing goes for firefighters who may work more or longer hours and may have higher or lower staffing levels.

OK now lets look at it another taking the ratio of teacher wages / firefighter wages :

	T / F
Washington	0.840
Florida	0.901
Colorado	0.913
Nevada	0.917
New Jersey	0.949
California	0.956
North Dakota	0.961
Oregon	0.977
Virginia	1.020
South Dakota	1.020
Hawaii	1.038
Texas	1.068
Arizona	1.081
Missouri	1.086
Maryland	1.118
Wyoming	1.127
Indiana	1.128
Nebraska	1.131
Montana	1.135
Kansas	1.172
New York	1.187
Oklahoma	1.206
Alabama	1.219
New Hampshire	1.225
Alaska	1.236
Connecticut	1.241
Tennessee	1.242
Pennsylvania	1.242
Rhode Island	1.260
Delaware	1.274
Iowa	1.288
West Virginia	1.307
New Mexico	1.329
Ohio	1.333
Arkansas	1.336
Mississippi	1.349
Illinois	1.364
Idaho	1.384
Vermont	1.410
Georgia	1.423
South Carolina	1.429
Massachusetts	1.437
Michigan	1.439
North Carolina	1.478
Maine	1.487
Kentucky	1.497
Louisiana	1.547
Minnesota	1.590
Utah	1.606
Wisconsin	1.746

You can see there that theres a huge disparity across the states. At one end in Washington state the teachers make about 84% of what firefighters do and in Wisconsin they make 174%.  

Who should make more?   I don't know.  I guess it depends on if you want your kids to be stupid or if you want your house to burn down.

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Teacher Pay versus Average wages, Per Capita & Median Incomes by State

Over two years ago I wrote an article discussing average teacher pay versus median household incomes per state.    That post seemed to generate some interest and discussion.   Some of the discussion was criticism based on the apples to oranges comparison between average pay and median household income.

I thought I'd both update the numbers and add some more information. 

I got teacher pay from the Teacher Portal site and they got the numbers from National Education Association (nea.org), National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov), 2011
The average wage numbers are from the May 2011 state cross industry estimates at the BLS site.

The per capita and median income are off of Wikipedia for 2010 which cites the Census. 

The point of this data is to put teacher pay in relation to general income levels per state.  Teacher pay varies considerably from state to state.   Income levels in general also vary considerably from state to state.   I'm just putting one column of numbers (teacher pay) along side another set of numbers showing state level averages and medians.

Here are the number...

First I'll start with just the average teacher  pay versus average annual wages for all occupations per state:

	teacher pay	average wages
Alabama	$47,803	$39,180
Alaska	$62,918	$51,590
Arizona	$47,553	$43,670
Arkansas	$46,500	$36,340
California	$67,871	$51,910
Colorado	$49,228	$47,510
Connecticut	$69,165	$52,830
Delaware	$57,934	$47,420
Florida	$45,732	$40,750
Georgia	$52,815	$42,590
Hawaii	$55,063	$44,600
Idaho	$47,416	$38,520
Illinois	$64,509	$46,550
Indiana	$50,801	$39,700
Iowa	$49,844	$38,820
Kansas	$46,598	$40,030
Kentucky	$48,908	$38,640
Louisiana	$49,006	$38,780
Maine	$47,182	$40,190
Maryland	$63,960	$51,860
Massachusetts	$70,752	$54,740
Michigan	$63,940	$43,700
Minnesota	$53,680	$46,150
Mississippi	$41,975	$34,770
Missouri	$45,321	$40,500
Montana	$47,132	$36,840
Nebraska	$47,368	$39,140
Nevada	$53,023	$41,860
New Hampshire	$52,792	$45,220
New Jersey	$66,612	$51,540
New Mexico	$46,888	$40,790
New York	$72,708	$52,810
North Carolina	$46,605	$41,250
North Dakota	$44,807	$38,870
Ohio	$56,715	$41,590
Oklahoma	$44,343	$38,190
Oregon	$56,503	$44,290
Pennsylvania	$60,760	$44,070
Rhode Island	$60,923	$47,390
South Carolina	$47,050	$38,560
South Dakota	$39,850	$35,390
Tennessee	$45,891	$39,130
Texas	$48,638	$43,090
Utah	$47,033	$40,950
Vermont	$50,141	$43,080
Virginia	$48,761	$48,870
Washington	$52,926	$50,280
West Virginia	$44,260	$36,220
Wisconsin	$54,195	$41,420
Wyoming	$56,100	$42,510

Teachers earn above average wages in every state except Virginia.   Now of course you do have to realize that average pay at the state level includes a lot of people working unskilled jobs with low educational requirements.    This is not an apples to apples comparison, its more of an apples to fruits comparison.   I think a better comparison would be to look at teacher pay versus the average wages for all people with college educations.  However I can't easily find those numbers.    Also note that this doesn't look at the value of benefits for a job and teachers have higher benefit levels than most jobs through their pensions and highly funded healthcare.


Now we'll compare teacher pay versus per capita pay and median income levels:

	teacher pay	per capita	median household	median family
Alabama	$47,803	$22,984	$42,081	$52,863
Alaska	$62,918	$30,726	$66,521	$77,886
Arizona	$47,553	$25,680	$50,448	$59,840
Arkansas	$46,500	$21,274	$39,267	$48,491
California	$67,871	$29,188	$60,883	$69,322
Colorado	$49,228	$30,151	$56,456	$70,046
Connecticut	$69,165	$36,775	$67,740	$84,170
Delaware	$57,934	$29,007	$57,599	$69,182
Florida	$45,732	$26,551	$47,661	$57,204
Georgia	$52,815	$25,134	$49,347	$58,790
Hawaii	$55,063	$28,882	$66,420	$77,245
Idaho	$47,416	$22,518	$46,423	$54,689
Illinois	$64,509	$28,782	$55,735	$68,236
Indiana	$50,801	$24,058	$47,697	$58,944
Iowa	$49,844	$25,335	$48,872	$61,804
Kansas	$46,598	$25,907	$49,424	$62,424
Kentucky	$48,908	$22,515	$41,576	$52,046
Louisiana	$49,006	$23,094	$43,445	$53,702
Maine	$47,182	$25,385	$46,933	$58,185
Maryland	$63,960	$34,849	$70,647	$85,098
Massachusetts	$70,752	$33,966	$64,509	$81,165
Michigan	$63,940	$25,135	$48,432	$60,341
Minnesota	$53,680	$29,582	$57,243	$71,307
Mississippi	$41,975	$19,977	$37,881	$47,031
Missouri	$45,321	$24,724	$46,262	$57,661
Montana	$47,132	$23,836	$43,872	$55,725
Nebraska	$47,368	$25,229	$49,342	$61,888
Nevada	$53,023	$27,589	$55,726	$64,418
New Hampshire	$52,792	$31,422	$63,277	$76,446
New Jersey	$66,612	$34,858	$69,811	$84,904
New Mexico	$46,888	$22,966	$43,820	$52,565
New York	$72,708	$30,948	$55,603	$67,405
North Carolina	$46,605	$24,745	$45,570	$56,153
North Dakota	$44,807	$25,803	$46,781	$62,920
Ohio	$56,715	$25,113	$47,358	$59,680
Oklahoma	$44,343	$23,094	$42,979	$53,607
Oregon	$56,503	$26,171	$49,260	$60,402
Pennsylvania	$60,760	$27,049	$50,398	$63,364
Rhode Island	$60,923	$28,707	$54,902	$70,663
South Carolina	$47,050	$23,443	$43,939	$54,223
South Dakota	$39,850	$24,110	$46,369	$58,958
Tennessee	$45,891	$23,722	$43,314	$53,246
Texas	$48,638	$24,870	$49,646	$58,142
Utah	$47,033	$23,139	$56,330	$64,013
Vermont	$50,141	$27,478	$51,841	$64,135
Virginia	$48,761	$32,145	$61,406	$73,514
Washington	$52,926	$29,733	$57,244	$69,328
West Virginia	$44,260	$21,232	$38,380	$48,896
Wisconsin	$54,195	$26,624	$51,598	$64,869
Wyoming	$56,100	$27,860	$53,802	$65,964

There are four columns of numbers there for each state.  First is the average pay for teachers.   This is an average figure and includes all teachers of varying experience levels.  It may be skewed one way or another if teachers in a given state have high or low average experience on the job.
Per capita income is the amount of wages averaged over a population so that includes people who don't work.  Median household income includes all households so its a mix of single people, single unmarried parents, retired couples and married couples with multiple children.   Family income only includes families and does not include single people.

None of these are perfect benchmarks for teacher pay versus other occupations nor does this say anything at all about whether or not teacher pay levels are 'fair' or the like.    I'm not saying teachers make too much nor too little.   We're just looking at the variation in pay for teachers from state to state and putting that into comparison with general wages per state.



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