Axios reports that our schools are in crisis:
Teachers are leaving the education workforce at a rapid clip, according to new LinkedIn data.
Staggering stat: Rates of attrition among educators is 66% above pre-pandemic levels.
Axios then offers to "go deeper" if you click the link. But don't worry: they assure us that going deeper will take only one minute.
But as always, I was curious. I'm sure that LinkedIn is the very gold standard of employment surveys, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking hires and quits in various occupations for decades via their JOLTS survey. And it will take less than a minute to look at their data:
The trendline above the blue data shows quits for all workers since the year before the pandemic. The orange line does the same for education workers. As you can see—in mere seconds!—the top line has been trending sharply upward since 2020. Education workers, however, aren't quitting in high numbers. Their trendline is dead flat.
Now, "educational services" includes principals, teachers, and teacher assistants. Teachers make up about two-thirds of that. So it's possible that teachers really are quitting in huge numbers, but principals and teacher assistants are sitting tight and bringing the quit average down. Anything is possible. But I wouldn't put much stock in that particular possibility.
But maybe retirements are up? Nope. That's included under "other," and it's too small to even show up on the chart.
So that's that. I'm not an expert in interpreting JOLTS data, and if anyone wants to rip me a new one because they think I got this wrong, that's fine. But only if you're an expert!
Find a measure of morale among educators. I can’t remember it ever being this baD.
My sister-in-law was a teacher in the 90's but has long since quit. We went to a few parties at her house - man, did those teachers sound miserable. It's like the students just sucked the life out of them.
Not an expert, so I’m just going to wonder if the reports of widespread burnout among health professionals is borne out in actual, you know, data.
…reports are …
Journalists, English majors, innumeracy and the tyranny of innumerate anectdote.
I suspect that Kevin is mostly or entirely correct, but there is something that chart doesn't tell us. Even if the level of quits is flat, there could still be a (bigger) shortage if a higher percentage of those quitting are leaving the profession, rather than getting a different job in education.
I didn't include this since it made the chart unreadable, but the hiring rate in the education sector is very high--much higher than for all workers. I'm not quite sure what this all means, but the data basically says that teachers aren't quitting *and* they're getting hired in big numbers. I acknowledge that this is a little strange.
FWIW, I wouldn't waste too much time on esoteric possibilities for why the data might be off. That stuff almost never pans out. However, one possibility is that, say, teachers in NYC are quitting in high numbers, and that makes news since most of the big media outlets are in NYC. Maybe.
I think it’s because the quits won’t show up in the BLS data until the end of the school year.
This based on?
I am one those teachers (science, high school) quitting traditional school and then switching to a remote education job. No net change.
I think the story with a lot of teachers, they are burned out and hate it, but unfortunately they are stuck with a narrow degree that limits their job possibilities elsewhere.
So there is a narrative that more teachers are unhappy (which I feel is true), reporters try to write an article or pull data that matches that narrative.
Blame it on CRT
Critical
Resignation
Theory
I think this is the right path. The JOLTS quit rate doesn't capture whether or not employees are leaving the industry.
This should have been a reply to TheMelancholyDonkey.
My sister retired--then went back part time....
I think that teachers are muddling through Covid, and may walk away after this year.
The ongoing crises has been keeping enough adults in the building. Teachers, aids, substitutes, bus drivers, administrators all go down with Covid--sometimes the only saving grace is that a lot of students are out too. But that has drained everyone--and now you have riots at school board meetings.....
The trend of people entering teacher training programs has been headed down for the last 15 years, though it's difficult to tell at what point that becomes a problem. It had been going up before that.
I wonder how many states require advanced degrees to be a grade school teacher. That would be a deal break for any aspiring teachers who crunched the numbers I would think.
I think a BA + a credential is the baseline, but a lot of districts require/encourage continuing training and education to qualify for raises, bonuses, preferential classroom assignments, etc., so there's a strong incentive to get an advanced degree. As you suggest, however, unless you pick an MA program that fully funds its students (which most don't), it's not likely to pay for itself if you're a public school teacher.
Job openings from the JOLTS data appears to tell a very different story (I think).
Job openings in educational services have exploded even when compared to total private job openings.
Another factor appears to be that education job openings were already very high going into the covid pandemic.
These stories might be coming out because the industry has finally reached a tipping point after 2 decades of attrition.
This subject is probably too complex for Kevin's usual one-hour treatment. When the pandemic hit and schools closed obviously a large number of people left the workforce:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LNWa
Since then recovery of employment in education has been slow. Are teachers (and other school employers) quitting or is something else going on? Quit rate is probably not telling the whole story. There is no doubt that many schools have been unable to re-open, or forced to close again, because of personnel shortage.
On the other hand the media tend to exaggerate most things, so stories can't always be taken at face value.