America’s largest labor union is the National Education Association (NEA), organized in 1906 with a congressional charter “to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States.”
One hundred and sixteen years later, the average individual U.S. teacher salary is $60,909, just below the median household income of $67,521 for the country in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Inadequate teacher pay has long been a staple of NEA rhetoric and advocacy, as seen in this April 29, 2019, statement by then-NEA President Lily Ekelsen Garcia:
“Across the nation educator pay continues to erode, expanding the large pay gap between what teachers earn and what similarly educated and experienced professionals in other fields earn.
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