---
title: "Teaching Assistant, Postsecondary"
description: "Assist faculty or other instructional staff in postsecondary institutions by performing instructional support activities, such as developing teaching…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-postsecondary"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Teaching Assistant, Postsecondary

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-9044 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-9044.00

Assist faculty or other instructional staff in postsecondary institutions by performing instructional support activities, such as developing teaching materials, leading discussion groups, preparing and giving examinations, and grading examinations or papers.

Also advertised as: Graduate Assistant; Graduate Fellow; Graduate Research Assistant; Graduate Student; Graduate Student Instructor (GSI); Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA); Research Assistant (RA); Teaching Assistant (TA).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $42,910 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $28,600 to $76,420, with the middle half between $35,270 and $60,510
- **Total US employment:** 164,090
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 25,700 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 32/100 — 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 164,090 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $28,600 |
| 25th | $35,270 |
| 50th (median) | $42,910 |
| 75th | $60,510 |
| 90th | $76,420 |
| Mean (average) | $47,670 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| MD | $58,330 | $55,574 | 5,030 |
| MA | $56,370 | $53,301 | 3,040 |
| TX | $55,670 | $57,358 | 13,540 |
| NJ | $54,260 | $49,869 | 3,390 |
| MN | $53,380 | $54,126 | 600 |
| UT | $52,300 | $52,901 | 2,020 |
| WA | $50,460 | $47,153 | 1,480 |
| NC | $50,050 | $53,061 | 2,900 |
| ND | $49,960 | $56,161 | 90 |
| OK | $49,920 | $56,829 | 1,680 |
| VA | $49,890 | $49,345 | 1,660 |
| AZ | $49,810 | $49,475 | 7,200 |
| KY | $49,680 | $55,103 | 990 |
| OR | $49,550 | $47,939 | 880 |
| RI | $49,420 | $48,318 | 50 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-postsecondary/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/teaching-assistant-postsecondary.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 205,500 in the 2025–2035 base year to 211,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,500 jobs, or +2.7%. About as fast as average: 2.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 25,700 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 57.3% |
| Master's Degree | 37.3% |
| Doctoral Degree | 3.7% |
| Some College Courses | 1.5% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 0.2% |

## What the work involves

- Copy and distribute classroom materials.
- Tutor or mentor students who need additional instruction.
- Evaluate and grade examinations, assignments, or papers, and record grades.
- Develop teaching materials, such as syllabi, visual aids, answer keys, supplementary notes, or course Web sites.
- Return assignments to students in accordance with established deadlines.
- Meet with supervisors to discuss students' grades or to complete required grade-related paperwork.
- Inform students of the procedures for completing and submitting class work, such as lab reports.
- Schedule and maintain regular office hours to meet with students.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — 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 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.3 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), Conventional (C), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.53 |
| C — Conventional | 4.99 |
| I — Investigative | 3.13 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.79 |
| R — Realistic | 2.15 |
| A — Artistic | 2.01 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 78.6 |
| ISFJ | 72.1 |
| ENFJ | 68.8 |
| ESFP | 64.4 |
| ESTJ | 57.8 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Tutor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/tutor) — median $43,350
- [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) — median $72,040
- [Education Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-teacher-postsecondary) — median $75,350
- [Career/Technical Education Teacher, Middle School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/career-technical-education-teacher-middle-school) — median $65,030
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Middle School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/middle-school-teacher) — median $64,370
- [Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructor) — median $61,540
- [Instructional Coordinator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/instructional-coordinator) — median $77,440
- [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
- [Teaching Assistant, Special Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/teaching-assistant-special-education) — median $37,010

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 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, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **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 31.0 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/teaching-assistant-postsecondary