Teachers: A question

[superrific]

I spent a couple of years working in early intervention. Summer school employment opportunities were abundant and classes were often moderately to severely understaffed. A percentage of gains could be a connection between tanking consumer sentiment, fear or higher costs and lower earning potential, an already modest earning profession, and a seasonal industry with historically lots of open jobs (anecdotally).

Cool. So now we have three explanations. I'm guessing the combo explains pretty much all the gains here.

1. ESSER
2. Pure statistical artefact from reduced job switching
3. Your explanation, which I will refer to as "reduction in supply constraints" because I'm a nerd. It's technically accurate.

 

[Centerpiece]

I think I found the answer.

There was a federal statute passed in the wake of the pandemic called ESSER. For now just think of it as a slush fund for schools (it isn't but for purposes of this exercise it doesn't matter). 2024-25 was the last year for this program to be available; to get reimbursement, funds had to be obligated by September 2024 and actually dispersed by Jan 2025. But districts could apply for extensions, and roughly $5B worth of extensions were approved.

So my guess is that schools decided to obligate funds by scheduling summer programs, because the alternative was just losing the money. Why not front-load stuff that you might do over the next three years to take advantage of federal funding that would expire.

Turns out that $5B buys roughly 70K jobs in education, which is basically the amount of jobs that were deemed to have increased because of unusually low decreases.

What this means is that the August jobs report is going to be ugly.

Retired school teacher here….
I think you’ve found it.
I was going to answer your initial question(s) as simply “it’s an anomaly” based on the timing of the survey, and once things shake out over the summer, those #’s may change, and even out to the norm.

But the bit about ESSER and how some States and systems may have played their hand in that seems to offer an explanation.

Also, NYCfan nails it… as a teacher, if you know you’re coming back to teach again the next school year after summer break, then you’re going to answer that household survey as a “yes, I’m currently employed”. Even though they know they’re on a 10 month contract and may not be currently “working” as a teacher in the middle of July. (This, in spite of any PT summer job like Uber, or whatever.)