Saturday, June 25, 2011

US Teachers Work Longer Hours Than Anywhere In The World, While Earning Less

Below is an infographic by Kamelia Angelova from Business Insider showing teachers' salaries and other stats such as class sizes for various leading economies worldwide. As you see U.S. teachers work the most hours in comparison to others, but earn much less.

Teachers Work the Same Number of Hours as Average U.S. Worker

As reported by the Wall Street Journal and according to a 2008 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), American primary-school educators spend 1,913 hours working a year including hours teachers spend on work at home and outside of the classroom. Data from a Labor Department survey that same year showed that the average full-time employee in the United States worked 1,932 hours spread over 48 weeks. This statistic shows that teachers work about the same number of hours as the average worker in the United States. This fact refutes the argument that teachers should be paid considerably less than other workers because "teachers only work 9 months of the year." Any effective teacher has always known that is simply not true. The OECD reported that primary-school educators spent 1,097 hours a year teaching in the classroom not including the work outside of the classroom--the most of any of the 27 members nations tracked. That same report showed the class sizes in the United States were on average the 10th highest of the 31 nations for which this data was reported. According to data from 2006, salaries for teachers in the United States were ranked 12th when adjusted for purchasing power parity and GDP per capita.


Source: "Education at a Glance 2008," OECD.

Source: "Education at a Glance 2008," OECD.

Link to OECD report: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/46/41284038.pdf

Link to Wall Street Journal Article: "U.S. Teachers’ Hours Among World’s Longest"

This post is quoted by The Atlantic News Wire: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/06/us-teachers-work-longest-hours-students-stay-average/39268/

The Atlantic News Wire story appears on Yahoo News as well:
http://news.yahoo.com/u-teachers-longest-hours-students-stay-average-225426641.html