NEA Misleads NJ Teachers into Believing They Have a Big Salary Premium, but NJ Cost of Living Erases It

Once again, the NJEA’s parent, the National Education Association (NEA), is misleading teachers into believing they are better paid than they really are — thanks to the teachers unions. 

In New Jersey, the NEA wants teachers to believe that they are paid 15% more than the average teacher nationally.  But in the real world, New Jersey’s sky-high cost of living entirely erases this nominal premium, so that New Jersey teachers’ salaries are only at the national average.  Once taxes are considered, New Jersey teachers earn less than the national average.  And after inflation, New Jersey teachers actually earn less now than they did 10-15 years ago.  But rather than address this issue of obvious importance to teachers, NJEA leadership chooses to spend $40 million of their highest-in-the-nation dues on NJEA President Sean Spiller’s “ego trip” run for governor.  

Sadly, NorthJersey.com‘s headline dutifully parrots the NEA’s misleading claim: “Report ranks NJ teacher salaries among top 10 nationwide.”  According to the NEA, the average 2024 New Jersey teacher salary is $82,877, which was 15% higher than the national average of $72,318 and ranked 7th-highest among the states*

But the NEA study presents nominal salaries, which are a poor and inaccurate measure of teachers’ pay.  To get a sense of the real value of a salary, a state’s cost of living must be taken into account. Certain states – like New Jersey – have very high costs-of-living. In fact, New Jersey’s cost-of-living happens to be 15% higher than the national average.**  So in the real world, where salaries are spent on goods and services at prevailing prices, New Jersey teachers have no salary premium at all.  In the real world, New Jersey teachers are paid at the national average: no better, no worse.

Table 1 below shows the math: New Jersey teachers have a nominal 15.1% salary premium, which is almost entirely wiped out by New Jersey’s 14.6%-higher cost of living.

Table 1.

And remember that this does not include taxes.  Taxes are indirectly reflected in the overall cost of living because companies must raise prices to account for high taxes they pay, but there’s no question that New Jersey has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, which hits teachers directly and reduces their take-home pay. And there’s no question that New Jersey’s taxes would drop teachers’ cost-of-living-adjusted, take-home pay to below the national average.

Even worse, as the NEA study acknowledges, teachers’ salaries have not kept up with inflation, so that teachers are actually earning less now than 10-15 years ago: When adjusted for inflation teachers make on average 5% less than they did 10 years ago and 9% less than the peak in 2009-10.  If that is true nationally, it is surely true in New Jersey.  And then there’s New Jersey teachers’ highest-in-the-nation (by far) mandatory dues.

So contrary to the headlines, New Jersey teachers do not have a salary premium at all.  In fact, after taxes and accounting for cost of living, New Jersey teachers are earning less than the national average.  And their salaries have not kept up with inflation, so that they actually have lower real incomes than they did in the past.

Where is the NJEA on this most important issue? How are they using New Jersey teachers’ highest-in-the-nation dues?  Spending $40 million of teachers’ dues on Spiller’s vanity run for governor. So rather than devoting maximum effort and money to pushing for better teacher salaries, NJEA leadership is devoting maximum effort and money to backing Spiller’s vanity run for governor.  And teachers have no say in the matter.  What a scam.

*Excluding Washington, DC.

**Council for Community & Economic Research cost of living index.