Teacher Burnout Statistics (2026 Update)

By the Transforming Education editorial team. Reviewed for accuracy against the sources listed below.

Teacher burnout is one of the better-measured problems in American education. RAND has surveyed a nationally representative panel of K-12 public school teachers every year since 2021, and Gallup, Pew, the NEA and NCES have added large surveys of their own. Together they show a workforce whose stress has eased slightly since the pandemic peak but remains far above that of other college-educated workers, with pay, student behavior and unpaid hours as the recurring causes.

This page gathers 30 teacher burnout statistics by theme, each with its survey year and a link to the source.

Teacher burnout statistics at a glance

• 55% of K-12 public school teachers reported frequent job-related stress in 2026, compared with 34% of similar working adults (RAND, 2026).
• 52% of teachers said they feel burned out at work always or very often, the highest rate of any profession Gallup measured (Gallup, 2022).
• 77% of teachers say their job is frequently stressful and 68% say it is overwhelming (Pew Research Center, 2024).
• 8% of public school teachers left the profession between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, the same leaver rate as in 2012-13 (NCES, 2023).
• At least 411,549 teaching positions, about one in eight nationally, were either vacant or filled by a teacher who was not fully certified in 2024-25 (Learning Policy Institute, 2025).

How many teachers are burned out?

• Teachers were more likely than similar working adults to report poor well-being on every indicator RAND tracks in 2026, a pattern that has held every year since 2021 (RAND, 2026).
• 55% of teachers experienced frequent job-related stress in January-February 2026, down from 62% in 2025 but still far above the 34% of similar working adults. Teachers were also more likely to report burnout, difficulty coping with job-related stress, and symptoms of depression (RAND, 2026).
• In 2024, about twice as many teachers as comparable working adults reported frequent job-related stress or burnout, and roughly three times as many reported difficulty coping with job-related stress (RAND, 2024).
• 44% of all K-12 workers reported feeling burned out always or very often in February 2022, the highest of any U.S. industry. College and university workers were next at 35%, and all other workers averaged 30% (Gallup, 2022).
• Within K-12, 52% of teachers reported that level of burnout, including 55% of female teachers and 44% of male teachers (Gallup, 2022).
• The burnout gap widened during the pandemic. In March 2020, 36% of K-12 workers reported frequent burnout versus 28% of other workers, an 8-point gap. By 2022 it was 44% versus 30%, a 14-point gap (Gallup, 2022).
• 90% of NEA members called burnout a serious problem in January 2022, and 67% called it very serious (NEA, 2022).

Note: "Burnout" and "frequent job-related stress" are measured differently by each survey, so figures from RAND, Gallup and the NEA are not interchangeable. Each is accurate for its own question and year.

Teacher stress statistics: what drives it

• Managing student behavior was the most cited source of job-related stress in 2026, named by 52% of teachers. Low salary and time spent working outside contract hours ranked next (RAND, 2026).
• In 2024, the top three stressors were the same: managing student behavior, low salary, and administrative work outside of teaching (RAND, 2024).
• 84% of teachers say there is not enough time during regular work hours for grading, lesson planning, paperwork and email, and 54% say balancing work and personal life is very or somewhat difficult (Pew Research Center, 2024).
• 70% of teachers say their school is understaffed, and 82% say public K-12 education has gotten worse over the past five years (Pew Research Center, 2024).
• 80% of NEA members said unfilled job openings had added work for the educators who remained, and 75% had covered classes or taken on other duties because of staffing shortages (NEA, 2022).
• 41% of public school leaders were moderately or extremely concerned about the mental health of their teachers and staff in February 2024, and 91% expressed at least some concern (NCES School Pulse Panel, 2024).

Teacher turnover statistics

Burnout and turnover are related but distinct. Surveys of intentions run far higher than measured departures, which is worth remembering when reading headlines.

• 84% of public school teachers who taught in 2020-21 were at the same school in 2021-22, 8% had moved to a different school, and 8% had left teaching. None of those shares differed measurably from 2012-13 (NCES Teacher Follow-up Survey, 2023).
• Private school teachers left at a higher rate: 82% stayed, 6% moved and 12% left (NCES, 2023).
• Among public school leavers, the most important reasons were retirement (16%), other personal life reasons (15%), pursuing a non-teaching position (13%) and a higher salary (9%) (NCES, 2023).
• Former teachers working in other jobs said the new job was better for work-life balance (66%), autonomy (60%), manageable workload (58%) and professional prestige (58%) (NCES, 2023).
• 18% of teachers said they were likely to leave their current job by the end of the 2025-26 school year, up from 16% in 2025 and down from 22% in 2024. Only 23% said they planned to remain in teaching as long as they were able (RAND, 2026; RAND, 2025).
• In 2024, teachers were about as likely as similar working adults to intend to leave their jobs: 22% versus 24% (RAND, 2024).
• 29% of teachers who were not retiring said it was at least somewhat likely they would look for a new job during the 2023-24 school year; of those, 40% would look outside education (Pew Research Center, 2024).
• 55% of NEA members said in January 2022 that they were thinking about leaving the profession earlier than planned, up from 37% the previous August. The figure was 62% among Black educators and 59% among Hispanic or Latino educators (NEA, 2022).
• About 90% of annual demand for new teachers is driven by attrition rather than growth, and fewer than one in five teachers who leave are retiring (Learning Policy Institute, 2025).
• Turnover rates are about 50% higher in Title I schools than in non-Title I schools, and about 70% higher for teachers in schools serving the largest concentrations of students of color (Learning Policy Institute, 2017).
• Each teacher who leaves costs a district roughly $12,000 to $25,000 to replace, depending on district size (Learning Policy Institute, 2025).

Pay and hours

• Teachers reported an average base salary of $75,599 in 2026, while similar working adults reported slightly more than $105,000. Only 39% of teachers received a raise that outpaced inflation (RAND, 2026).
• Nearly one-third of teachers held a job outside their school system in 2026, spending an average of 13 hours per week on it, and teachers spent an average of $665 out of pocket on classroom supplies (RAND, 2026).
• Teachers worked an average of 49 hours per week in 2025, four hours fewer than in 2024 and 2023, but still ten hours more than they were contracted to work (RAND, 2025).
• In 2024, teachers worked 53 hours per week compared with 44 for similar working adults, with about 15 of those hours outside their contracts, and earned roughly $70,000 compared with $88,000 (RAND, 2024).
• 36% of teachers considered their base pay adequate in 2024, compared with 51% of comparable working adults; those who did not wanted a raise of about $16,000 on average (RAND, 2024).
• 15% of teachers are extremely or very satisfied with their pay and 51% are not too or not at all satisfied (Pew Research Center, 2024).
• Black teachers reported earning about $4,400 (6%) less than White teachers in 2025, and female teachers reported earning about $7,000 (9%) less than male teachers (RAND, 2025).

Teacher shortages and vacancies

• 74% of public schools had difficulty filling at least one teaching vacancy with a fully certified teacher before the 2024-25 school year, down from 79% the year before. The leading reasons were a lack of qualified candidates (64%) and too few candidates applying (62%) (NCES School Pulse Panel, October 2024).
• Schools averaged six teaching vacancies going into 2024-25 and filled 79% of them with fully certified teachers. Schools with more than 75% students of color filled 72%, compared with 83% in schools with fewer than 25% students of color (NCES, October 2024).
• 50% of public school leaders felt their school was understaffed in October 2024, up from 45% a year earlier, even though only 3% of teaching positions were vacant (NCES School Pulse Panel, December 2024).
• 48 states and the District of Columbia employed an estimated 365,967 teachers who were not fully certified for their assignments, and 31 states plus D.C. reported 45,582 unfilled positions, in the 2024-25 school year (Learning Policy Institute, 2025).
• Special education (45 states), science (41) and math (40) were the most commonly reported shortage areas, and schools with the highest concentrations of students of color were four times as likely to employ an uncertified teacher as those with the lowest (Learning Policy Institute, 2025).

Who is most affected

• Female teachers have reported higher rates of frequent job-related stress than male teachers every year since 2021. In 2026, 59% of female teachers reported frequent job-related stress versus 44% of male teachers (RAND, 2026).
• Black teachers were significantly more likely than White teachers to say they intended to leave their job in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and in 2024 were less likely to say their pay was adequate (RAND, 2025; RAND, 2024).
• Teachers with three or fewer years of experience were the most mobile group: 80% stayed, 13% moved schools and 7% left teaching in 2021-22 (NCES, 2023).
• Teachers in high-poverty public schools (75% or more students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) had slightly lower retention than those in low-poverty schools: 82% stayed versus 85% (NCES, 2023).

What the data say about reducing burnout

No single survey tests interventions, but the pattern is consistent. The stressors teachers name most, student behavior, pay and unpaid hours, are structural, so the effective responses are too: behavior support that does not leave teachers alone with escalations, protected planning time inside the contract day, and pay that tracks comparable professions. The RAND trend lines show conditions can move: frequent stress fell seven points between 2025 and 2026, and weekly hours fell by four between 2024 and 2025.

At the individual and team level, the evidence base around educator social and emotional competence is relevant. CASEL's research summary notes that educators with strong social and emotional skills report higher job satisfaction and less burnout, and that teachers who teach SEL report feeling more effective and having lower job-related anxiety. Our SEL for educators toolkit and self-reflection tools are built for that purpose, and the classroom management strategies guide addresses the top-ranked stressor directly.

Try this: Audit one week of your own hours against your contract. RAND's data suggest a typical teacher gives away about ten unpaid hours a week. Naming where they go (grading, email, duty coverage) is the first step toward negotiating them down with your team or principal.

How we selected these statistics

• Sources. We relied on RAND's State of the American Teacher series (2024, 2025 and 2026), Gallup's 2022 workforce study, the NEA's January 2022 member survey, Pew Research Center's 2023-24 teacher survey, the NCES Teacher Follow-up Survey and School Pulse Panel, and the Learning Policy Institute's 2017 turnover report and 2025 shortage fact sheet. Each figure was checked against the linked page on the access date shown.
• Recency. Most figures were collected between 2022 and 2026. Older figures appear only where no newer national measure exists and are labeled with their year.
• Comparability. Burnout, stress and intention to leave are measured with different questions by different organizations. We report each as its source defines it and do not combine them.
• What we left out. Several circulating claims, such as a fixed percentage of teachers who quit within five years or a single national teacher burnout rate, could not be verified against a current primary source and were excluded.
• Limitations. All figures are self-reported. The NEA survey covers members only; the others use nationally representative samples.