What a substitute teacher earns, by metro

A substitute teacher in Anchorage has a median wage of $78,840. In Northeast Alabama nonmetropolitan area the median is $17,510. That is a 4.5-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

What the percentile band tells you

Ten per cent of substitute teachers earn below $28,560 and ten per cent above $65,790 — a 2.3× band. The upside from median to 90th percentile is 58%, which is a normal amount of room for experience and specialisation to matter. An offer below the 25th percentile is worth questioning; one above the 75th is worth taking seriously.

Why the range is 4.5× wide

7 of the ten best-paying metros for substitute teachers are in CA. When one state dominates the top of the table like this, cost of living is doing part of the work but rarely all of it — state licensing rules, public-sector pay scales and the presence of a few large employers usually explain the rest. If you are comparing an offer in CA against one elsewhere, adjust for housing before concluding anything.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 25-3031. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 439 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 89 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.