---
title: "Preschool Teacher, Except Special Education"
description: "Instruct preschool-aged students, following curricula or lesson plans, in activities designed to promote social, physical, and intellectual growth."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/preschool-teacher"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Preschool Teacher, Except Special Education

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-2011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-2011.00

Instruct preschool-aged students, following curricula or lesson plans, in activities designed to promote social, physical, and intellectual growth.

Also advertised as: Child Development Teacher; Early Childhood Teacher; Group Teacher; Infant Teacher; Montessori Preschool Teacher; Nursery Teacher; Pre-Kindergarten Teacher (Pre-K Teacher); Teacher.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $38,140 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $18.34/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $28,990 to $61,390, with the middle half between $34,530 and $47,550
- **Total US employment:** 478,780
- **Typical entry education:** Associate's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.1% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 65,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 58/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 478,780 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $28,990 |
| 25th | $34,530 |
| 50th (median) | $38,140 |
| 75th | $47,550 |
| 90th | $61,390 |
| Mean (average) | $43,030 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $62,150 | $56,551 | 2,350 |
| VT | $49,730 | $50,767 | 940 |
| HI | $48,780 | $44,365 | 1,410 |
| NJ | $48,220 | $44,318 | 16,190 |
| KS | $47,750 | $53,015 | 1,330 |
| CA | $47,400 | $42,811 | 55,700 |
| NE | $47,040 | $52,207 | 1,630 |
| NY | $46,520 | $43,106 | 23,870 |
| AK | $46,130 | $45,067 | 520 |
| MA | $45,890 | $43,392 | 18,710 |
| CT | $45,740 | $44,146 | 5,230 |
| WA | $45,660 | $42,668 | 13,210 |
| CO | $45,500 | $44,152 | 5,210 |
| OR | $45,140 | $43,672 | 6,300 |
| VI | $44,790 | No BEA price parity | 100 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/preschool-teacher/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/preschool-teacher.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 555,100 in the 2024–2034 base year to 578,100 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 22,900 jobs, or +4.1%. Faster than average: 4.1% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 65,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Associate's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma | 28.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 17.2% |
| Some College Courses | 12.2% |
| Master's Degree | 12.0% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 11.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 10.3% |

## What the work involves

- Read books to entire classes or to small groups.
- Demonstrate activities to children.
- Prepare materials and classrooms for class activities.
- Organize and label materials and display students' work in a manner appropriate for their ages and perceptual skills.
- Teach basic skills, such as color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, and social skills.
- Assimilate arriving children to the school environment by greeting them, helping them remove outerwear, and selecting activities of interest to them.
- Organize and lead activities designed to promote physical, mental, and social development, such as games, arts and crafts, music, storytelling, and field trips.
- Identify children showing signs of emotional, developmental, or health-related problems and discuss them with supervisors, parents or guardians, and child development specialists.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Instructing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Education and Training — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 2.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Artistic (A), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| A — Artistic | 3.98 |
| C — Conventional | 3.61 |
| R — Realistic | 2.94 |
| I — Investigative | 2.76 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.49 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFP | 73.1 |
| ENFJ | 72.8 |
| ESFJ | 70.2 |
| ENFP | 67.7 |
| INFJ | 64.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESFP, ENFJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Kindergarten Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/kindergarten-teacher) — median $62,680
- [Special Education Teacher, Kindergarten](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-kindergarten) — median $67,170
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Special Education Teacher, Preschool](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-preschool) — median $64,830
- [Special Education Teacher, Secondary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-secondary-school) — median $74,260
- [Special Education Teacher, Elementary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-elementary-school) — median $67,170
- [Childcare Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/childcare-worker) — median $34,980
- [Teaching Assistant, Preschool, Elementary, Middle, and Secondary School, Except Special Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-preschool-elementary-middle-and-secondary-school) — median $37,010
- [Middle School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/middle-school-teacher) — median $64,370
- [Teaching Assistant, Special Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-special-education) — median $37,010

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/preschool-teacher