Teacher staffing challenges were pervasive throughout the pandemic, but the downturn in student enrollment combined with the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds leaves considerable uncertainty about the postpandemic teacher labor market. We use data on new teacher endorsements and job postings scraped from district hiring websites in Washington to measure postpandemic supply and demand for teachers both overall and by subject area. We find that between 2022 and 2024, the supply of new teachers in Washington exceeded demand for teachers in the aggregate, but demand for special education and science teachers considerably outpaced the supply of new endorsements in these areas.
EdwardsD. S.KraftM. A.ChristianA.CandelariaC. A. (2025). Teacher shortages: A framework for understanding and predicting vacancies. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 47(3), 703–729.
5.
GoldhaberD.FalkenG.TheobaldR. (2024). ESSER funding and school system jobs: Evidence from job posting data (Working Paper No. 297-0424). National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
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KraftM. A.LyonM. A. (2024). The rise and fall of the teaching profession: Prestige, interest, preparation, and satisfaction over the last half century (No. w32386). National Bureau of Economic Research.
