Teacher Salary in Wyoming 2026:
$61,150 Median

The published Wyoming figure is $61,150 a year per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $51,630 at the 10th percentile to $76,860 at the 90th. That is 4.4% below the national median of $63,970. BLS publishes no hourly wage for this occupation — it is reported on an annual basis — and the row is SOC 25-2021, elementary school teachers except special education, used here as the anchor for teaching generally.

Only one Wyoming metro has a published figure: Cheyenne, at $61,150, which is identical to the Wyoming statewide figure of $61,150. Casper is not published by BLS. With 2,600 elementary teachers in the whole state and districts paying from statewide funding on published salary schedules, there is essentially no geographic wage variation in Wyoming teaching to report — which is itself the most useful thing this table says.

The Professional Teaching Standards Board, an independent body created by the legislature rather than a branch of the Department of Education. It requires a bachelor's degree, an approved educator preparation programme, fingerprinting and a background check, and it issues subject and grade-range endorsements that determine what a teacher may actually be assigned. The board operates reciprocity for teachers licensed in other states and alternative routes that rural districts use for hard-to-fill subjects, with renewal on a five-year cycle.

Generally yes, through PTSB reciprocity. A teacher prepared and licensed in another state can usually obtain a Wyoming certificate without repeating an educator preparation programme, provided the endorsements map onto Wyoming's subject and grade-range categories. The endorsement equivalence is the part that trips people up rather than the certificate itself — Wyoming districts are small enough that a teacher is often expected to cover several subjects, so which endorsements you can carry across matters more here than in a large state.

It closes most of the gap. Wyoming levies no state or local income tax, so the whole of the $61,150 median is free of income withholding, whereas the national median of $63,970 is a gross figure earned mostly in states that tax it. Against peers publishing similar gross pay — Idaho $61,600, Alabama $61,380, Wisconsin $61,210, South Carolina $60,820, Kentucky $60,610 — the Wyoming teacher generally comes out ahead on take-home. The caveat is that Wyoming funds schools substantially from mineral revenue, which ties the stability of those schedules to energy markets.

Because Wyoming funds its schools through a statewide model rather than through locally raised property taxes, a structure the state adopted under sustained court direction on school finance equity. Districts pay from a common funding block on published salary schedules driven by years of service and degree attainment, so two teachers with the same experience and credentials in different corners of the state earn broadly similar amounts. That is exactly what compresses a band: the $59,310 twenty-fifth percentile sits under $2,000 below the $61,150 median, and the $73,860 seventy-fifth is only about $3,000 below the $76,860 ninetieth. In states where districts set pay from local wealth, those distances are several times larger.

It means the market is personal rather than statistical. With roughly 170 pro-rated openings a year across the entire state, hiring in Wyoming happens district by district and often subject by subject, and a single endorsement — special education, secondary mathematics, a career and technical field — can be the difference between several offers and none. It also means the PTSB endorsement structure deserves more attention than the certificate: small districts need teachers who can cover multiple assignments, and the alternative and exception routes exist precisely because ordinary recruitment does not fill every rural post.

Cautiously, and locally. The national projection reflects shrinking elementary cohorts, and it produces about 91,000 average annual US openings anyway because retirement and attrition dominate. Wyoming's pro-rated share of roughly 170 openings a year is small in absolute terms but large relative to a 2,600-teacher workforce, which is the more meaningful ratio. The state's real staffing problem is distributional rather than aggregate: remote districts struggle to recruit at any point in the cycle, which is why hard-to-staff differentials and alternative certification routes persist, and why a teacher willing to work in one has more leverage than the tight statewide band suggests.