Teacher Salary in Los Angeles, CA 2026,
$101,860 Median | BLS + Market Data

Los Angeles teachers earn a BLS median of $101,860/yr across the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro, with a published band from $62,250 to $129,130. That is 59.2% above the US median for the occupation. BLS publishes no hourly wage for teaching, which is reported on an annual basis. The metro employs 44,790 elementary school teachers.

Slightly — the metro median runs 2.2% above the California statewide figure, which is a modest premium given how much more expensive the region is than most of the state. Note also that BLS publishes an identical median for the San Francisco metro on this occupation; both are reported exactly as released, and the coincidence does not indicate an error in either figure.

Almost every public district in the metro pays from a published grid with rows for years of service and columns for accumulated postgraduate units and degrees. A teacher's pay is the cell where those two meet, negotiated collectively and applied uniformly — there is no individual negotiation and no market rate. The practical consequence is that moving columns by completing units or a master's degree lifts pay faster than waiting for step increases, and the schedules themselves are public documents anyone can read before accepting a post.

Through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. The route requires a bachelor's degree, a teacher preparation programme, demonstration of subject-matter competence, examinations covering basic skills and subject matter, and a fingerprint background check, leading to a preliminary credential that must be cleared to a professional one through an induction programme. The credential is issued statewide — districts hire, but Los Angeles issues no credential of its own.

It is genuinely difficult, and the region's districts say so openly when they discuss recruitment. The published median is a strong teaching salary by national standards, but housing costs across the metro absorb far more of it than they would elsewhere, and many teachers commute considerable distances inland as a result. CalSTRS provides a real defined benefit at the end of a career, which is worth weighing, but it does not help with the first decade.

OEWS estimates are produced independently for each metropolitan area from that area's own survey responses. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont are separate published areas with separate samples, and on this occupation in the May 2025 release both landed on the same median. Everything else about the two areas differs — the percentile ladders diverge, and Los Angeles counts a far larger teaching workforce. Publishing both figures as released is the honest treatment; adjusting either one to avoid the coincidence would be falsifying the source.

BLS reports elementary, middle, secondary and special education teachers as separate occupations, and this page uses the elementary row as the profession's anchor. Secondary and special education assignments in this metro sit on the same district schedules, so the schedule structure described here applies to them too, but their published medians differ. Anyone comparing an offer for a specific assignment should read this figure as the profession's centre of gravity in the metro rather than as their own occupation's estimate.

The distance between the median and the 90th percentile here is not explained by classroom teaching alone. Department chair and coaching stipends, summer and intersession assignments, additional-period contracts and district-funded professional roles all sit on top of schedule pay, and they concentrate among senior teachers who are already at the top column. A teacher planning toward the upper part of this range should think in terms of which additional assignments a district funds, not simply in terms of remaining in post long enough.