Teacher pay is falling.🤔 The chickens are coming home to roost. Decades of generous health and retirement benefits; low employee contribution rates and no understanding of how it was all to be paid for is now biting teachers and some other public employees in the butt. 

No, the data is not misleading. What was misleading was the overly generous promises made to teachers and other government workers along with the impact on taxpayers.

“Teachers are having to pay for the pensions of an older generation” Welcome to the world of pension underfunding by government and public unions. Welcome to the world of Social Security‼️Yup, when you have to pay for something it kinda cuts into your net income and there is little left to add to benefits. Imagine that😡

But there is hope, just raise the teachers pay (which also raises pension costs and liabilities) and then raise taxes on the citizens who have none of these benefits and pensions and everyone will be happy. LOL

This data is a bit misleading because it makes it seem like teachers are benefiting from larger contributions to their retirements. But a 2016 analysis from Chad Aldeman of the Bellwether Education Partners shows that the money schools are spending to pay for teachers’ retirement and savings doesn’t actually go into the pockets of teachers. “For every $10 states and districts contribute to teacher pension plans, $7 goes toward paying down past pension debt, and only $3 goes toward benefits for current teachers,” Aldeman writes.

In other words, current teachers are having to pay for the pensions of an older generation, which is a wider demographic problem that goes beyond education. Aldeman argues that the increasing costs of insurance and pension plans are eating into teachers’ take-home pay, while not providing better benefits. This is on the minds of many teachers When we published our database of how teacher salaries have changed state by state, we asked teachers to tell us about their experience

Source: Teacher pay is falling. Their health insurance costs are rising. – Vox

What many teachers are now being asked to pay for their health benefits as a percentage of the cost is what private sectors workers have been paying for years. Public worker health benefits are typically very generous by today’s standards; that means they are expensive; the premiums are high and thus the payroll deduction is high as well. Welcome to the real world. You see, what you get in benefit coverage is what determines the premiums you pay.

Public worker unions don’t tell their members the truth and politicians don’t tell teachers or taxpayers the truth, but sometimes the truth hurts, especially when you delay telling it.