Teacher pay calculator
The posted hourly rate is not what a teacher costs. Add the employer's share and the number moves by a fifth. This works the rate you offer through to the line that shows up in the budget.
Enter what you actually pay, not the posted rate. Payroll load is the employer side on top of wages — set it to your own figure.
BLS median for childcare workers, May 2025: $16.82
What this room costs you in labour
$1,588
fully loaded labour, per week, for this room
- Base wages per week
- $1,345.60
- Employer load
- $242.21
- Per child per week
- $99.24
- Annual, this room
- $82,566
- Annual per staff member
- $41,283
What the market pays
The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median pay for childcare workers at $34,980 a year, or $16.82 an hour, in its May 2025 figures, across about 1,010,300 jobs. Preschool teachers, a separate occupation with a credential attached, sat at $38,140 a year and $18.34 an hour across 583,200 jobs.
The two figures matter separately when you write a job posting. A role that requires a CDA or an associate degree is competing in the preschool-teacher market, not the childcare-worker one, and pricing it at the lower median is why the position stays open.
| Occupation | Median hourly | Median annual | Employment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Childcare workers | $16.82 | $34,980 | 1,010,300 |
| Preschool teachers | $18.34 | $38,140 | 583,200 |
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wage data, employment as of 2025. Fetched 2026-09-04.
The employer load
On top of wages sit the employer's FICA share, federal and state unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and whatever benefits you offer. Together they are usually somewhere between twelve and thirty per cent of wages, and the spread is wide enough that a national average would be useless here — so it is an input.
Get your real number from a payroll report, not from a rule of thumb. Workers' compensation rates for childcare vary sharply by state, and a program that guessed low finds out at renewal.
Where the load hides
Paid time off does not appear as a separate line, but it raises the effective hourly cost of every hour actually worked. If your teachers get two weeks, your real cost per worked hour is about four per cent above the posted rate before any other load.
Hiring against the outlook
BLS projects childcare-worker employment to decline about 2% between 2025 and 2035, while preschool teachers grow about 4%. Neither number tells you whether you can fill a room next month — turnover, not growth, is what empties a classroom.
The practical read: the credentialed end of the market is tightening slightly and the uncredentialed end is not growing, so the programs that keep staff are the ones competing on the load side — schedule, breaks, and paid training — rather than on the headline rate alone.
Sources
- BLS OOH — Childcare Workersfetched 2026-09-04
- BLS OOH — Preschool Teachersfetched 2026-09-04