Teaching Profession

Teachers Don’t Qualify for Overtime Pay. Should They?

By Madeline Will — November 08, 2023 4 min read
Image of a clock on supplies.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Teachers don’t qualify for overtime, no matter how they’re paid or how much they make. Now, the National Education Association is arguing they should.

The U.S. Department of Labor is considering raising the minimum salary threshold for worker exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act by about 55 percent, meaning that more non-teaching employees would qualify for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week. The rule could affect workers like librarians and aides who aren’t assisting in classrooms.

Public comment for the changes closed on Tuesday.

In a public letter submitted to the department, the nation’s largest teachers’ union wrote that it supports the proposed update—but it also proposed a major new change to the law. It urged the Biden administration to go one step further and remove the exception for teachers so that they can earn overtime pay, too.

Currently, eligible employees are eligible for overtime pay if they earn less than $35,308 a year. The Labor Department has proposed raising the threshold to $55,068, or $1,059 weekly. But there’s a regulatory exemption for doctors, lawyers, and teachers.

“It no longer makes sense to treat teachers, 44 percent of whom are paid below the proposed salary threshold, the same as high-earning doctors and lawyers,” wrote Alice O’Brien, the general counsel for the NEA. “Instead, teachers, a heavily female profession that suffers from a large and growing wage gap compared with other similarly educated professionals, should be provided the same protections as other white-collar professionals whose exempt status depends not just on job duties, but also on salary.”

Last year, the median salary for doctors was $229,300, and the median salary for lawyers was $135,740, the NEA’s letter noted. The median pay for teachers was $66,397.

Forty-four percent of public school teachers—1.93 million people—earn less than the proposed salary threshold, according to the NEA’s data. And the vast majority of teachers start their careers making less than the threshold, with an average starting salary of $42,844, despite recent legislative efforts to raise it to $60,000.

Yet teachers report working long hours. Data from the EdWeek Research Center has found that a typical teacher works about 54 hours a week.

Could districts afford such a change?

The Biden administration is not currently proposing such an overhaul to the Fair Labor Standards Act. And such a change would carry huge financial consequences for school districts.

Districts would have to choose whether to increase teachers’ salaries to exceed the threshold or have teachers who make below the amount collect overtime pay.

That would have a significant impact on school and district operations, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of advocacy and governance at AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

Districts might not be able to afford to have as many teachers, meaning class sizes could increase, and hiring could stall, she said.

Superintendents are “stewards of public dollars,” she said—they’re faced with the competing tension of empowering employees and safeguarding district budgets.

Even so, O’Brien said in an interview that low wages are driving people out of the teaching profession and discouraging young people from entering. “This is a real crisis in the teaching profession,” she said.

Offering overtime pay to teachers—or encouraging districts to raise salaries so they don’t have to pay overtime—could mitigate shortages and lessen hiring costs for districts, O’Brien argued.

And while such a proposal isn’t currently on the table, she hopes the Labor Department will consider it alongside the salary threshold rule.

“The department has always listened to us respectfully, and I hope they will listen to us now,” O’Brien said.

The proposed changes are still costly

Some national education organizations have opposed the Biden administration’s threshold proposal altogether.

AASA, the Association of Educational Service Agencies, and the Association of School Business Officials, International, submitted a public letter to the department on Tuesday arguing that the proposed threshold is “far too high.”

See also

Illustration of a man pushing half of clock and half of a money coin forward on a red arrow
iStock/Getty Images Plus

The Labor Department last raised the threshold in 2019, which took effect in January 2020. Typically, the department revisits the salary threshold every five to nine years, and the AASA, AESA, and ASBO letter urged the department to stick to that cadence.

“We are sensitive to the current economic realities,” the letter stated. “At the same time, we believe DOL should wait to update the salary threshold until inflationary pressures have cooled off and employers have a better understanding of the post-pandemic economic challenges and realities they face.”

The Biden proposal is similar to one crafted in 2016 by the Obama administration that would have raised the minimum salary threshold to $47,000.

A federal judge struck down that proposal before it could take effect after business groups and 21 states sued to stop it, agreeing with them that the Labor Department exceeded its authority and set the threshold too high.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
Mathematics K-12 Essentials Forum Helping Students Succeed in Math
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Teaching Profession ‘You Can Lead Now’: Inside the NEA’s Plan to Engage New Teachers
In an aging workforce, the nation's largest teachers' union seeks ways to engage younger educators.
3 min read
Em DePriest of Kansas speaks on behalf of a proposal to create an early career teacher working group. Members of the National Education Association's Aspiring Educators Program move to bring an initiative to a vote during the NEA Representative Assembly in Portland, Ore., on July 3, 2025.
Em DePriest, a teacher in Kansas, speaks in favor of a proposal to create an early-career teacher working group. Members of the National Education Association's Aspiring Educators program moved to bring the initiative to a vote during the NEA representative assembly in Portland, Ore., on July 3, 2025.
Kaylee Domzalski/Education Week
Teaching Profession Can the National Education Association Win Over Republican Members?
Union leaders seek common ground with conservative teachers while managing an active, mostly liberal membership.
5 min read
The National Education Association's Republic Educators Caucus tabled at the NEA Representative Assembly on July 4, 2025, in Portland, Ore
The National Education Association's Republic Educators Caucus had a table at the NEA representative assembly on July 4, 2025, in Portland, Ore. The national teachers' union has been working to engage conservative teachers and communities.
Kaylee Domzalski/Education Week
Teaching Profession Teachers Face New Burdens After Supreme Court LGBTQ+ Opt-Out Ruling
A Supreme Court ruling allowing parents to opt their children out of certain lessons could add new challenges for teachers.
6 min read
Demonstrators are seen outside the Supreme Court as oral arguments are heard in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor on April 22, 2025. The case contends that forcing students to participate in LGBTQ+ learning material violates First Amendment rights to exercise religious beliefs.
Demonstrators are seen outside the Supreme Court as oral arguments are heard in the case of <i>Mahmoud</i> v. <i>Taylor</i> on April 22, 2025. The justices ruled that parents can exercise their religious right to have their children excused from LGBTQ-themed lessons, which has prompted new logistical and practical concerns among teachers.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP
Teaching Profession Fewer Teachers Plan to Quit, But Pay and Burnout Are Still Major Issues
Teachers still feel overworked and underpaid, but some signs suggest things may be slowly improving.
4 min read
A second grader shares a story he wrote with a teacher.
A second grader shares a story he wrote with a teacher. This year, 16% of teachers reported an intent to leave the classroom, down from 22% last year.
Allison Shelley for All4Ed