How Many Hours a Week to Art Teachers Work

When I write nigh teacher pay and teacher work I get a lot of feedback. In particular, I am inundated with two responses presented as arguments about whether teachers deserve higher pay.

1. Many teachers work very long hours during the school year. (Supporting higher pay.)
2. Many teachers don't work very many hours at all. (Suggesting teachers are already overpaid.)

And then, do the facts support both arguments? No.

In other words, neither strong view has much relation in reality to how many hours teachers put in. Certain, some teachers put in hour after hour later hour. Sure, some teachers manage to get abroad with hardly working at all. Only overall, teachers' work hours look pretty much similar other higher graduates' hours. First let'southward go to the evidence, and then in one case we have the answer I'll argue the question isn't very helpful.

Measuring hours worked for big groups isn't like shooting fish in a barrel because if you ask people, they tend to exaggerate the number of hours they put in. The right fashion to track how people spend their time is to enquire them to go on a "time diary," where every 15 minutes they write down their current action. Keeping a time diary doesn't highlight any detail activity, thereby avoiding a good deal of conscious and unconscious bias. Fourth dimension diaries are believed to lead to pretty authentic reporting. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) asks thousands of people to keep just such a diary for a 24-hour period. The data collected at that place lets u.s. compare hours worked by teachers to the hours worked by other college-educated, full-time workers.

Good academic research on the question appears in an article in Pedagogy Finance and Policy past Kristine L. West. For most practical purposes, teachers and nonteachers piece of work about the aforementioned number of hours per week during the school twelvemonth. West did detect some differences. During the school year, her calculations show that teachers work 39.8 hours per calendar week while nonteachers work 41.5 hours. During the summer, teachers do work noticeably fewer hours. West reports that teachers work 21.v hours per calendar week during the summer. (Perhaps think of this equally more than like a half-time job than similar "summer vacation.")

Given Due west'south findings, I've believed for some time that the reply to the ii arguments to a higher place should be both. Average work hours may not exist much dissimilar but some teachers put in exceptionally long hours, while others really shirk. I was incorrect; the answer is neither. Teachers are no more likely to work long hours than those in other occupations and also aren't more likely to requite work short shrift.

I went dorsum to the ATUS (with the help of my research assistant) and, post-obit Due west's methodology, drew a newer and somewhat larger sample, all for full-fourth dimension workers with higher degrees. (Post-obit West'due south lead, I employ the broader ATUS definition of "work related activities" for both teachers and nonteachers.) When it comes to average work during the school year, we institute the same substantive answer every bit Due west. We constitute teachers work an average of 42.2 hours a week as compared to nonteachers working 43.2 hours.

We also establish an interesting (just not substantively terribly of import) switch when you control for gender. Women teachers work (a little) more than women nonteachers and men teachers work (a little) less than men nonteachers. The table here gives the splits. It's worth remembering that a big bulk of teachers are women while a majority of the nonteachers workforce are men—this is why the aggregate numbers advise teachers piece of work fewer hours, merely that event disappears once y'all control for gender.

	Women	Men
Teachers	41.4	44.viii
Nonteachers	40.1	45.0
Boilerplate weekly hours during the school year, excluding holidays

Even if average work hours aren't much different between teachers and others, do nosotros notice teachers more others working unusually long hours while some other set of teachers work notably fewer hours? The quick pictorial answer is "no." Hither's a picture of the distribution of weekly work hours for both teachers and nonteachers. There'due south just no important difference between the 2 groups.

For those who prefer numbers to pictures, we've calculated the number of work hours at the low end (tenth percentile) and high terminate (90th percentile) for both groups.

	10th percentile	90th percentile
Teachers	fifteen.0	55.0
Nonteachers	14.8	56.seven
Weekly Piece of work Hours

The information gives a clear determination: While there are some teachers who put in mode to a higher place the expected number of hours and while there are also some teachers who shirk, that'southward as truthful for other workers. No deviation—no stardom.

Given that we have an respond to the original question, permit me tell you why to an economist the question isn't all that interesting. Asking virtually the number of hours a job requires, or necessary degrees, or other sorts of qualifications and abilities of employees is interesting simply not dispositive. Some jobs are especially rewarding (say, working with kids); and some jobs are especially stressful (say, working with kids). The bottom line on deciding on bounty is whether you're paying plenty to get a sufficiently big supply of sufficiently good employees. In other words, if you think we take more great teachers than we need you lot should exist okay with lower bounty rates. Contrariwise, if yous think nosotros demand more great teachers than nosotros have on board and then you should want to raise salaries. That'south how a market arrangement works—you go what you pay for.

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I am grateful to UCSB undergraduate and Gretler Beau Israel Chora for research help.

Data from the Current Population survey is from IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota, world wide web.ipums.org.

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/06/12/do-teachers-work-long-hours/#:~:text=We%20found%20teachers%20work%20an,to%20nonteachers%20working%2043.2%20hours.

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