Where Teachers Are Needed Most
When college students decide to become teachers, they typically choose their specialization based on personal interests—a love of history, science, or working with certain age groups. But it's not clear how much they know about their actual job prospects. If they had more information about the job market for teachers, they might be surprised by what it shows.
The following chart shows there are significant differences in hiring opportunities across teaching specializations in Washington state. For example, for every 100 newly certified special education teachers, there are 153 job postings. Compare this to elementary education, where only 50 positions exist for every 100 new certifications.
The chart highlights an important (and familiar) reality: the teacher labor market isn't uniform. Supply and demand vary dramatically by subject area, geographic location, and working conditions. For decades, these differences have fueled calls for differentiated pay structures . But they also raise an intriguing question: How (if at all) would prospective teachers' decisions change if they had this kind of information earlier? To find out, CALDER is conducting an information experiment with 13 teacher preparation programs as part of its IES R&D Center on teacher recruitment and retention.
To go deeper on the latest supply and demand data, see Dan Goldhaber, Grace Falken, Roddy Theobald (2025). Supply and Demand in the Postpandemic Teacher Labor Market. CALDER Working Paper No. 313-0325