Teacher's 18-Year-Old Son Who Just Graduated From High School Makes $38 More An Hour Than Him
The discrepancy in the two men's salaries shows what is valued in society today.
fizkes / Shutterstock As teachers leave the profession at an alarming rate, many are seeking more lucrative options.
It’s no secret that teaching is not the highest-paying profession out there. One teacher saw this truth up close as he contrasted his own salary with his son’s.
A teacher discovered that his son makes almost $40 more than him per hour.
One teacher took to Reddit to share a startling discovery he made. He said he “tagged [the post as] humor because it’s either laugh or cry.”
The teacher explained that his son, who is 18 years old, “graduated high school a month ago.” He “has a job with a local roofing company in their solar panel install division,” he said.
“For commercial jobs, he’s paid $63 an hour, $95 if it’s overtime,” he stated. “For residential jobs, he makes $25 [an] hour.”
The teacher said that his son usually makes $63 an hour. “About 70% of their jobs are commercial,” he said. “He’s currently on the apprentice waiting list for the local IBEW hall.”
He also explained that he was in quite a different position with his career, despite having worked for much longer than his son.
He is 40 years old, with a master's degree and “12 years of teaching experience.” Unlike his son, he makes “$53,000 a year with [around] $70,000 in student debt load. My hourly rate is about $25 [an] hour.”
This means that, when his son is doing commercial work, which is apparently the majority of the work he does, he makes $63 an hour — a whopping $38 more than his father’s $25 an hour.
Even when the son is working one of the company’s residential jobs, which are the lowest paying, he is still making an equal amount to his father. This is all while his father has 12 years more experience than he does, along with a master's degree.
“This,” the teacher argued, “is one of [the] many reasons I think of when people talk about why public education is in shambles.”
Public school teachers don’t make much money at all.
As the anonymous teacher from this Reddit post pointed out, teachers are far from being overpaid. In fact, many would argue that it’s a passion for the work, not the money, that keeps teachers going into the profession.
According to U.S.A. Facts, “In 2022, the average public school teacher salary was $66,397.”
Teacher salaries do vary by state, which likely accounts for why the teacher from this post makes a bit less than the national average, $53,000 a year.
As demonstrated by this teacher and his son, a college degree isn’t always necessary to make a good living.
Society typically equates higher education with higher pay. However, that isn’t true in all cases.
A study from Georgetown University found that it is possible to only graduate from high school and still make as much money or more money over the course of your lifetime than someone with a college degree.
Harvard Business Review agreed. They said, “Now, companies need more workers than workers need jobs. Instead of weeding people out, businesses are tasked with figuring out how to bring new talent in, and removing the college degree requirement has been an effective way to do so.”
While college degrees used to be automatic tickets to better jobs with more money, that is no longer universally true. In many situations, those who graduated with a high school diploma and nothing more have the chance to make just as much, if not more, than those who pursued higher education, especially as demand for skilled laborers increases.
It is unfortunate that circumstances like these result in a lack of compensation for a much-needed college-educated professional.
However, this will likely become all the more common as people focus on the importance of other industries instead of education.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.