About 1 in 6 U.S. teachers work second jobs

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Many public school teachers in the United States are dissatisfied with their pay. That may help explain why a sizable share of them have a second job – and not just in the summertime.

For the 2020-21 school year – the most recent year with available data – 16% of full-time public elementary and secondary school teachers in the U.S. He worked a nonschool job over the summer. A similar share (17%) did so during the school year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

These shares are much higher than the 4.6% of all U.S. workers ages 20 and older who worked multiple jobs in 2020 and 2021, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) averages.
The 2020-21 school year was during the COVID-19 pandemic, which upended many aspects of teachers’ jobs. However, the share of teachers working second jobs outside the classroom did not change much from before the pandemic. During the 2017-18 year, 16% of teachers worked nonschool jobs over the summer and 18% did so during the school year.

In fact, these shares have remained relatively consistent – and much higher than the shares for the entire U.S. workers ages 20 and older – since at least 2007-08, the first year that NCES tracked summer employment separately.