Pay Teachers Like Public Health Professionals

In the U.S., the national average teacher salary is $72,030. The average starting salary is far lower—$46,526 nationwide and $58,409 in California (2023–24). Those numbers don’t just shape who becomes a teacher. They shape what schools can realistically do for kids when anxiety spikes, when a student stops turning in work, or when a class is quietly unraveling.

Here’s the stance I can’t shake: teacher pay is public health spending. Not in a fuzzy, “everything affects everything” way. In a measurable way that shows up in teen mental health outcomes, staffing stability, and the day-to-day capacity of adults in buildings to notice risk and respond early.

This post is part of our Education, Skills, and Workforce Development series, where we look at the pipelines that build a skilled economy. Teacher compensation belongs in that conversation because teachers aren’t a cost center—they’re a cornerstone workforce. When we underpay them, we’re not “saving money.” We’re choosing a weaker education workforce and a shakier talent pipeline.

Teachers are already doing public health work

Teachers don’t just teach content; they run one of the largest youth-facing support systems in the country.

In practical terms, teachers are often the first adults to spot:

• escalating depression or anxiety
• self-harm warning signs
• bullying and social isolation
• housing instability or food insecurity
• chronic sleep deprivation and burnout

That’s public health. And it’s happening during normal school days, in 30-second hallway check-ins and five-minute conversations after class.

The early-warning system schools rely on

Schools are where problems show up early because students spend so many hours there. When a teen is at risk, it’s frequently a teacher—not a clinician—who notices the change in behavior, attendance, or engagement first.

But early-warning systems only work when the workforce is stable and supported. High turnover, vacancies, and constant long-term substitutes don’t just disrupt instruction; they erase continuity, which is exactly what helps adults notice patterns over time.

The data connecting teacher salaries and teen well-being is getting harder to ignore

The strongest argument for higher teacher pay isn’t sentimental. It’s outcomes.

A longitudinal study spanning 1991–2016 found that investments in public education—specifically teacher salaries—correlate with lower teen suicide risk at the state level, even after accounting for a range of economic and socio-cultural variables.

At the same time, youth mental health indicators remain alarming:

• Nearly 40% of LGBTQ+ youth have contemplated suicide.
• In 2021, 30% of teen girls seriously considered suicide.
• In 2023, 9.5% of high school students reported attempting suicide.

If you’re designing workforce development strategies for 2030, you can’t treat those numbers like a separate issue. They are directly tied to graduation, postsecondary persistence, job readiness, and long-run labor force participation.

Why pay shows up in student outcomes

Higher pay doesn’t “buy” mental health. What it buys is capacity:

• districts can recruit and retain experienced teachers
• teachers can afford stable housing and transportation
• schools can reduce chronic vacancies and oversized classes
• staff have more bandwidth to build relationships and respond to warning signs

And capacity is the ingredient schools are short on.

Underpaying teachers is a workforce strategy (just a bad one)

Teacher compensation is often treated as a local budget detail. It’s not. It’s a national workforce development problem.

When a profession requires a degree, licensure, continuing education, and constant performance pressure, the labor market responds to wages. If pay lags behind other degree-required jobs, fewer people enter and more people leave.

That dynamic is part of what economists describe as the teacher pay penalty—teachers earning less than similarly educated peers.

The “pink-collar” problem isn’t history—it's policy

Teaching has long been devalued as “women’s work,” grouped with other caregiving professions that are socially essential but financially discounted.

That devaluation doesn’t just show up in pay. It shows up in expectations:

• the assumption that teachers will buy supplies
• the assumption that they’ll absorb secondary trauma without support
• the assumption that they’ll provide counseling without training

Most systems would never staff a hospital this way. Yet we routinely staff schools like the adults are infinitely renewable.

When teachers struggle, students lose twice

I’ve found it helpful to name the two-layer cost of underpaying educators:

1. Direct workforce cost: vacancies, turnover, substitutes, fewer experienced teachers.
2. Indirect student cost: less instructional stability, weaker relationships, reduced ability to respond to mental health needs.

Even the teacher wellness data is flashing red. A 2024 survey found 48% of public school teachers reported that their mental health interfered with their ability to teach.

That’s not a personal failure. That’s a system design problem.

A better model: treat teacher compensation like core infrastructure

Teacher pay shouldn’t be debated only during contract seasons. It should be planned like infrastructure—because it functions like infrastructure.

Roads don’t get built on bake-sale economics. Neither should the education workforce.

What “pay them like they matter” can look like in practice

You don’t need a single magic number that works for every region. You need policies that behave like grown-ups about labor markets.

Here are four compensation moves that reliably improve recruitment and retention:

1. Competitive starting salaries (region-adjusted)
   Starting pay is your front door. If it’s stuck in the $40Ks in a high-cost area, you’re advertising that teaching is only for people with a second income.

2. Faster salary growth in years 1–10
   Many districts back-load pay increases. That’s backwards for retention because teachers are most likely to leave early.

3. Hard-to-staff role stipends that are meaningful
   “Extra $1,000 a year” won’t fix special education, bilingual education, or secondary math shortages. Stipends need to be large enough to change behavior.

4. Benefits that reduce life volatility
   Reliable health coverage, mental health access, childcare partnerships, and housing support matter because they keep teachers stable.

Pair pay with training so schools aren’t improvising mental health support

Compensation is necessary, but not sufficient. Teachers are being asked to manage classroom mental health dynamics without adequate training.

A practical approach is to fund stackable credentials and professional learning in:

• trauma-informed classroom practices
• suicide awareness and referral protocols
• restorative practices and de-escalation
• collaboration with counselors and community providers

This connects directly to workforce development. Schools need a skills strategy for adult learning, not just a hope-and-pray approach.

Workforce development leaders: here’s what to do next

If you work in policy, higher ed, workforce boards, philanthropy, or employer partnerships, you have more influence here than you might think.

Treat teacher compensation as part of the talent pipeline you’re responsible for. Because it is.

6 actions that create real movement

1. Put teacher pay into your region’s workforce plans
   If your plan names nursing, manufacturing, or cybersecurity but ignores teaching, it’s incomplete.

2. Build teacher residency and apprenticeship pathways
   Paid, mentored, classroom-embedded routes reduce debt barriers and raise novice teacher success.

3. Fund “grow-your-own” programs with wraparound supports
   Paraprofessionals and community members often make excellent teachers—but they need tuition coverage, paid release time, and advising.

4. Support mental health staffing ratios, not just training
   Training teachers without adding counselors, social workers, and psychologists is like training EMTs without ambulances.

5. Tie investments to retention, not just recruitment
   Signing bonuses make headlines. Working conditions and salary schedules keep people.

6. Insist on transparent compensation dashboards
   Make pay and vacancy data visible by school and role. Sunlight changes budget conversations.

“People also ask”: does teacher pay really affect student mental health?

Yes—both directly and indirectly. Directly, higher pay reduces teacher stress and instability, which affects classroom climate. Indirectly, higher pay improves retention and staffing stability, which strengthens the relationships and continuity that protect student well-being.

“People also ask”: why treat teachers as essential workers?

Because schools function as daily-care institutions for young people. Teachers supervise, support, and respond to crises in real time. That’s essential work, regardless of whether we’ve chosen to pay it that way.

The public health workforce we’re ignoring is sitting in classrooms

Teacher pay debates often get framed as generosity versus restraint. That frame is wrong.

Paying teachers more is a workforce development decision and a public health decision. It stabilizes the adults students rely on, strengthens the education pipeline, and reduces the churn that makes schools feel permanently understaffed.

If your goal is a healthier, more skilled workforce in the next decade, start where the workforce begins: classrooms. Raise teacher pay in ways that improve retention, fund training that matches the job teachers are already doing, and build career pathways that make teaching a viable long-term profession.

What would change in your community if we treated teacher compensation like the public-health infrastructure it already is—and budgeted accordingly?