I recently made the Technological Age’s most common mistake: I let myself get dragged into an argument in the comments section. Specifically, I let some asshat, holding forth about the famously dismal wages and working conditions for American schoolteachers, try and prove that things aren’t that bad, and where they are, it’s because of common economic factors. In short, this person insisted, stop complaining about teaching conditions; either work or quit.
That latter option dominated this person’s argument. I’ve heard in frequently on my co-workers’ right-wing talk radio, too: if you dislike your job’s wages or working conditions, quit and get another one. They use one phrase repeatedly: “just quit.” Like they believe finding work consists of leaving one job and walking to another. Especially for skilled employment like teaching, the application process can require months of negotiation, besides the expense of relocating.
The average starting schoolteacher’s salary in Nebraska, where I live, is $34,465 per year, according to the National Education Association. That’s about $5000 below the national average—but, considering Nebraska’s lower cost of living, that’s not bad. I wouldn’t want to raise children on that salary, certainly, but for a beginner, it’s a reasonable middle-class wage, if you’re just starting out. But if you think that’s sustainable, try getting a home loan. Please.
My counter-arguer insists that this wage breaks down to about $24 per hour, significantly about the state average. This seemed weird to me, until I worked his math backwards. To achieve this absurdly high number, this person calculated the average starting salary, figured 180 instructional days per school year (the standard in most jurisdictions), and broke each day into eight hours. This figures to about $23.94 per hour.
If you’re following this, my counter-arguer assumes schoolteachers only work on instructional days, and only work eight hours. If you’ve ever taught, or been teacher-adjacent, you know this makes no sense whatsoever. Teachers spend countless long nights, weekends, and non-instructional days on grading and lesson prep, to say nothing of requirements for continuing education, departmental functions, and bureaucratic “in-service” days. Teachers don’t stop when students go home.
Faced with this failure of reasoning, my counter-arguer retreated into high-school economics, insisting that “supply and demand” devalues teacher wages. Basic economics teaches that scarcity makes something more valuable, while oversupply drives value down. Teachers’ wages suck, in other words, because there are too many teachers. This might make sense if teachers weren’t in such short supply that school districts are actively headhunting qualified teachers from other states.
One could extend this logic to other industries. Construction, the field where I’m currently employed, reported a nationwide worker shortage of 300,000 personnel in June 2019. This especially applies to skilled laborers, such as carpenters and ironworkers. Yet wages remain low: one co-worker, an experienced finish carpenter, can’t find work above $18 per hour without moving across state lines. He and his wife together are barely making house payments.
Two factors drive this reality. First, while there’s arguably an undersupply of skilled workers, probably caused by American education policy favoring universities over trade school, there’s also an undersupply of employers. My co-worker, despite being more skilled than me, cannot find employers willing to pay better, at least locally, because our area has too few contractors employing finish carpenters. While I won’t say those contractors engage in price-fixing, they certainly have little incentive to pay better, under current minimal competition.
Second, there’s an economic truth long acknowledged in certain circles: the more useful a job is for general society, the worse it generally pays. Currently, even after the 2008 economic meltdown, financiers and investors generally have the highest income, while laborers, educators, and service providers—the people who create genuine public welfare and social stability—have seen their wages stagnate for two generations.
This reality comes most clearly in anything related to food. “Tipped workers,” a category dominated by food service workers, haven’t seen their minimum wage increased since 1991. That in an industry with America's highest wage theft rates. Meanwhile, America’s farm debt has reached levels unseen since the 1980s. We nominally laud American farmers, and encourage underemployed youth to get jobs waiting tables, then pay both fields starvation wages.
So yeah, “just quit.” Move to another industry… if you can. Which most people can’t; most teachers, carpenters, and waiters will remain teachers, carpenters, and waiters. Career changes, presented as flippant, are exceedingly difficult. So lobbying for better conditions isn’t whining; working people have a right to demand control in work.
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