Teachers: A question

[superrific]

So in the jobs report today, the single biggest category of job increases were in state and local education. Yes, that's counterintuitive, right? So it turns out that the jobs declined, but less than usual so the seasonal adjustment treated it as a gain. But why would there be fewer job losses this summer? Thought I'd go to the source:

1. Do teachers consider themselves unemployed during the summer? Like, if someone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called you and asked, "are you employed," and you're a first grade teacher in July, would the answer be yes or no?

2. Many teachers work other jobs during the summer. Let's say they drive Uber -- I don't mean to stereotype, I'm just picking an easy example. So anyway, if a teacher is driving Uber over the summer, would they tend to say their employment was at Uber or would they still say they were a teacher?

3. So what if the temp jobs at places like Uber don't materialize this summer? So fewer teachers drive Uber, meaning that more teachers are doing nothing. Would that make them more likely to report employment as a teacher?

Note that there are two jobs reports: the establishment survey (where the numbers are provided by employers) and the household survey (which are generated by calling people and asking about their employment). Some divergence between the two is expected. The questions I'm asking primarily relate to the household survey. The household #s aren't broken down very finely, so it's hard to compare apples to apples. It does appear that there's not a big gap between the two, meaning that my questions 1-3 are only part of the puzzle but anyway:

4. Would there be any reason that schools would have higher staffing numbers this summer? There were about 160K more jobs in education this June than last June. This makes no sense to me. My questions above were asking, in effect, whether this is a statistical artefact. This question is asking is there any unusual factor that would lead to such an increase.

 

[lawtig02]

It's also possible all the Gen Zers who are not finding openings in other industries are looking for any opportunities, and teaching young kids is a ubiquitous need.

 

[Carolina Fever]

Maybe more kids in summer school? Or maybe more year round schools?

 

[ZenMode]

So in the jobs report today, the single biggest category of job increases were in state and local education. Yes, that's counterintuitive, right? So it turns out that the jobs declined, but less than usual so the seasonal adjustment treated it as a gain. But why would there be fewer job losses this summer? Thought I'd go to the source:

1. Do teachers consider themselves unemployed during the summer? Like, if someone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called you and asked, "are you employed," and you're a first grade teacher in July, would the answer be yes or no?

2. Many teachers work other jobs during the summer. Let's say they drive Uber -- I don't mean to stereotype, I'm just picking an easy example. So anyway, if a teacher is driving Uber over the summer, would they tend to say their employment was at Uber or would they still say they were a teacher?

3. So what if the temp jobs at places like Uber don't materialize this summer? So fewer teachers drive Uber, meaning that more teachers are doing nothing. Would that make them more likely to report employment as a teacher?

Note that there are two jobs reports: the establishment survey (where the numbers are provided by employers) and the household survey (which are generated by calling people and asking about their employment). Some divergence between the two is expected. The questions I'm asking primarily relate to the household survey. The household #s aren't broken down very finely, so it's hard to compare apples to apples. It does appear that there's not a big gap between the two, meaning that my questions 1-3 are only part of the puzzle but anyway:

4. Would there be any reason that schools would have higher staffing numbers this summer? There were about 160K more jobs in education this June than last June. This makes no sense to me. My questions above were asking, in effect, whether this is a statistical artefact. This question is asking is there any unusual factor that would lead to such an increase.

My wife signs her contract for the next school year before finishes the current school year. She would not (should not) consider herself to be unemployed since she's under contract.

 

[farce©]

My wife signs her contract for the next school year before finishes the current school year. She would not (should not) consider herself to be unemployed since she's under contract.

Same for my wife and she gets paid 12 months per year, so she doesn't consider herself unemployed.....she's getting paid.

 

[dukeman92]

Same for my wife and she gets paid 12 months per year, so she doesn't consider herself unemployed.....she's getting paid.

Can't she choose her pay plan and elect to get her compensation squeezed into 10 months?

 

[CFordUNC]

I don’t know the answers to any of the questions posed by super, but I just wanted to join this thread to express my profuse gratitude for anyone and everyone on this board who may be a teacher, or who may be related to a teacher, or who may have been a teacher previously. Y’all have my most unequivocal respect and gratitude for the jobs you do and I am deeply sorry that society as a whole does not give teaching and education the respect or the compensation that it deserves.

 

[farce©]

Can't she choose her pay plan and elect to get her compensation squeezed into 10 months?

She could when she taught in public school. In the charter school where she teaches now it is 12 months across the board.

 

[uncmba]

Teachers in NC are on a 10-month contract. They used to offer an option to spread the money over 12 months. But they may longer do that. The state employees credit union stepped in and as a savings program helps teachers put away enough for the other two months.

 

[Bigs23]

Teacher contracts are generally 10 months, year to year. I think most systems now pay them over 12 months without the 10 month pay option. Teachers are not officially employed for those 2 months but most have signed a contract to return for the next school year.

Maybe more teachers are getting summer jobs this year?

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

I'm not sure if this follows logically... but my first thought is that more young teachers are still living at home with their parents, as are more recent college grads in general. Large student loans, high cost of housing, low teachers' wages make it tough to live on your own.

But a teacher's salary is more than enough to enjoy life if your parents still pay for all your room and board. So probably a lot of young teachers are taking their summers off to enjoy them, since they do not have the pressure of supporting a household of their own.

 

[superrific]

I don’t know the answers to any of the questions posed by super, but I just wanted to join this thread to express my profuse gratitude for anyone and everyone on this board who may be a teacher, or who may be related to a teacher, or who may have been a teacher previously. Y’all have my most unequivocal respect and gratitude for the jobs you do and I am deeply sorry that society as a whole does not give teaching and education the respect or the compensation that it deserves.

Does this apply to professors, or only primary education?

 

[superrific]

Same for my wife and she gets paid 12 months per year, so she doesn't consider herself unemployed.....she's getting paid.

OK, but she's idle in the summer. What if she works a different job? How would she report her employment in that case?

 

[superrific]

Maybe more kids in summer school? Or maybe more year round schools?

Hmm. That would be a good theory. Turns out, though, that year round schools have not increased over the past five years, so that's out.

 

[superrific]

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.

 

[nycfan]

So in the jobs report today, the single biggest category of job increases were in state and local education. Yes, that's counterintuitive, right? So it turns out that the jobs declined, but less than usual so the seasonal adjustment treated it as a gain. But why would there be fewer job losses this summer? Thought I'd go to the source:

1. Do teachers consider themselves unemployed during the summer? Like, if someone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called you and asked, "are you employed," and you're a first grade teacher in July, would the answer be yes or no?

2. Many teachers work other jobs during the summer. Let's say they drive Uber -- I don't mean to stereotype, I'm just picking an easy example. So anyway, if a teacher is driving Uber over the summer, would they tend to say their employment was at Uber or would they still say they were a teacher?

3. So what if the temp jobs at places like Uber don't materialize this summer? So fewer teachers drive Uber, meaning that more teachers are doing nothing. Would that make them more likely to report employment as a teacher?

Note that there are two jobs reports: the establishment survey (where the numbers are provided by employers) and the household survey (which are generated by calling people and asking about their employment). Some divergence between the two is expected. The questions I'm asking primarily relate to the household survey. The household #s aren't broken down very finely, so it's hard to compare apples to apples. It does appear that there's not a big gap between the two, meaning that my questions 1-3 are only part of the puzzle but anyway:

4. Would there be any reason that schools would have higher staffing numbers this summer? There were about 160K more jobs in education this June than last June. This makes no sense to me. My questions above were asking, in effect, whether this is a statistical artefact. This question is asking is there any unusual factor that would lead to such an increase.

My husband, mother and several aunts, uncles and cousins are or were public school teachers. They always considered themselves employed teachers even in the summer.

In my experience observing them and their cohorts, a lot of teachers leave a job at the end of a school year but sign on at another school to start the next when the family moves, when they get better school opportunities, to teach at their kid’s school, etc. There is a lot of year-end churn. And when you see less churn usually coincides with when teachers feel more conservative about their job opportunities in the field and outside the field. They cling tighter to their jobs in other words when things look iffier.

I have no idea whether that is reflected in the data you reviewed or is just my anecdotal experience. But over decades of being exposed to public school teachers, it has been the case that in slower economic times, teachers are much more cautious about job hopping — when layoffs come, they are usually last hired, first fired, so you at least want to stay in the same state system if you do move. It was particularly pronounced during the Great Recession.

 

[CFordUNC]

Does this apply to professors, or only primary education?

Absolutely 100% to professors, too

 

[superrific]

My husband, mother and several aunts, uncles and cousins are or were public school teachers. They always considered themselves employed teachers even in the summer.

In my experience observing them and their cohorts, a lot of teachers leave a job at the end of a school year but sign on at another school to start the next when the family moves, when they get better school opportunities, to teach at their kid’s school, etc. There is a lot of year-end churn. And when you see less churn usually coincides with when teachers feel more conservative about their job opportunities in the field and outside the field. They cling tighter to their jobs in other words when things look iffier.

I have no idea whether that is reflected in the data you reviewed or is just my anecdotal experience. But over decades of being exposed to public school teachers, it has been the case that in slower economic times, teachers are much more cautious about job hopping — when layoffs come, they are usually last hired, first fired, so you at least want to stay in the same state system if you do move. It was particularly pronounced during the Great Recession.

Interesting. Of course that's true of all workers to some degree, but maybe teachers even more because they are on contracts.

Let's think through whether it explains the establishment survey today (I'm dropping the parts that go to household surveys).

Normal times:
Teacher changes jobs. The old school district reports this as a departure when the person quits. But the new school district doesn't report it as a job gain until the person starts. Thus teachers changing jobs show up in the unemployment numbers through an artifice.

This year: fewer teachers changing jobs. Per that accounting above, there would be fewer teachers considered unemployed in June/July. Thus we would see a seasonal adjustment creating artificial gains.

This would only be true if schools account for jobs in this manner. That, in turn, would requires schools treating continuing employees as having a different employment status for continuing teachers and new teachers. I suppose that would help explain what we are seeing, if this is the accounting method.

I think this might be a factor.

 

[superrific]

Actually, I think nycfan's observations are probably responsible for a lot of the change. Which would, ironically, make the positive jobs number here actually betoken pain moving forward.

Let's model this briefly. Employees on leave are counted as employed. Continuing school staff are probably counted as being on paid leave over the summer. How it's accounted for doesn't need to match actual outlays. So whether teachers are paid over 10 or 12 months probably doesn't affect whether the school district budgets for them as if they are on a 12 month schedule, with two months of paid leave.

But as to a teacher changing jobs? It might stretch the imagination too much even to account for that person being on leave, if the person has quit. But the school district wouldn't count the person as being hired until they actually start.

SO: teachers changing jobs = summer unemployment. Fewer job changes, less summer unemployment, creating the illusion of more jobs because of seasonal adjustment.


I think between ESSER and this effect, I've found the explanation I was looking for. Prepare for a dismal August report, when most of the "gained" jobs are "lost" due to less seasonal increase.

 

[Healing]

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).