Bachelor's graduates in teacher-prep CIPs (13.10, 13.12, 13.13) earn about — at year five after exit. Master's graduates in the same CIPs earn about —. The master's premium is —, and it persists across the trajectory. Both rungs still sit below the BLS-published kindergarten and elementary teacher wages, and in every state in the dataset both sit short of what a single adult needs to clear a living wage.
Built from Census Bureau PSEO earnings at 4-digit CIPs 13.10 (Special Education and Teaching), 13.12 (Teacher Education and Professional Development, Specific Subject Areas, largely secondary teachers), and 13.13 (Teacher Education and Professional Development, Specific Levels and Methods, largely elementary and early childhood) at degree levels 03 (bachelor's) and 05 (master's). CIP 13.01 (Education, General) is excluded because its BA cohort includes a large share of non-teaching exits that confound the credential-ladder comparison. Earnings are pooled across a 5-year graduation cohort window at each institution. Paired with BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics May 2024.
Most K-12 classroom teaching jobs require a bachelor's plus a state license. The salary schedule then offers a master's bump that grows over time. The question is whether the master's investment shows up in graduate earnings during the first years after the degree is awarded, or whether the credential ladder is structurally flat in the labor market that hires these graduates.
This page pulls every institution-level record from PSEO at CIPs 13.10 (Special Education), 13.12 (Teacher Prep by Subject Area, mostly secondary), and 13.13 (Teacher Prep by Level and Method, mostly elementary and early childhood). It compares the bachelor's and master's medians side by side, and against the BLS OEWS teacher-wage floor. Earnings are headlined at year 5 after exit rather than year 1, because PSEO's first calendar year captures only the partial Sep-Dec teaching contract that follows a May graduation and meaningfully understates the entry teaching wage.
Each dot is one institution's PSEO-reported median earnings for graduates five years after exit, pooled across cohorts. The two columns are the two credential tracks aggregated across the three focal teacher-prep CIPs.
The implication. Unlike the childcare CIP, the teacher-prep ladder does have a real master's premium that persists across the trajectory. The premium does not change the larger picture: even master's graduates' year-5 medians sit below the BLS kindergarten and elementary teacher floor, and BA graduates remain short of it at every horizon. The K-12 salary schedule sets that floor; the credentialing pipeline reads it as a ceiling.
National medians of institutional medians for teacher-prep CIPs, at years one, five, and ten after exit. Shaded bands span the 25th to 75th percentile of institution medians at each point.
Six BLS occupations sit downstream of teacher-prep credentials. They are the labor market PSEO earnings get compared to. The Public-school wage schedule sets these floors largely independent of the credentialing pipeline that feeds them.
Solid bar is the state's year-5 median (Census PSEO-E, 5-year pooled cohort window per institution). Shaded red extension is the shortfall to the single-adult living wage (MIT, Feb 2026). Sorted by largest shortfall first. Y5 chosen over Y1 because the first-calendar-year horizon undercounts teaching contracts.
The aggregate above pools three CIPs that look different up close. Subject-Area teacher prep (13.12, largely secondary) has both rungs well-populated. Level/Method teacher prep (13.13, largely elementary and early childhood) and Special Education (13.10) run almost entirely at the master's level, with BA samples small enough to be noisy. Each card also shows the share of bachelor's graduates in the closest NY Fed major who are working in jobs that do not require a degree (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recent grads aged 22-27, Feb 2026 release). Secondary teaching shows the highest underemployment of the three at 21.7%; elementary and special ed sit near 16%.
Data sources, scope, why year-5 leads the headline numbers, why PSEO sits below the BLS OEWS floor, what the page does not capture, and replication notes are documented in a separate two-page methodology note.
Read the methodology note (PDF) →
Primary sources: Census PSEO-E (earnings), BLS OEWS (occupational wages), MIT Living Wage Calculator (state benchmarks).