JLF’s Mitch Kokai writes for Carolina Journal‘s Daily Journal:
In 2017, the latest year in which numbers are available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average private-sector salary was $48,986 in North Carolina. The national average was $55,338. North Carolina’s average stood at 88.5 percent of the national average.
There’s good news. Over the five years from 2012 to 2017, N.C. private-sector salaries grew a full percentage point in comparison with the national average. That’s no small feat. But the average salary for a private-sector worker in this state still falls 11.5 percentage points below that average.
Now let’s return to the discussion of teacher pay. The National Education Association suggests that the average N.C. teacher is paid a salary of $53,975. In comparison, the average teacher salary nationwide stands at $61,782.
Note that the average N.C. public school teacher makes significantly more money than the average private-sector worker. (This is true of average teachers nationwide compared to their private-sector peers as well.) Second, the average N.C. public school teacher earns a paycheck much closer to the national private-sector average than his friends and neighbors working in this state’s private sector.
Read more here.
