Time Machine

Substitute teachers

Name: Substitute Teachers, Short-Term: employment and wages since 1900
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Official title Substitute Teachers, Short-Term (SOC 25-3031)

Also called Sub teacher, Day substitute, Guest teacher, Day-to-day sub, Long-term substitute

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 524,770 US substitute teachers, with median pay of $41,670 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 25,000 from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for substitute teachers: Google Classroom, Chromebooks, and digital learning management systems, 2012 to 2023.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 2% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

8.3% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Substitute teachers: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/25-3031

Chicago

Future History. "Substitute teachers: jobs and pay since 1900." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/25-3031.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_25_3031, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Substitute teachers: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/25-3031}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

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187519001925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Supply Teacher / Relief Teacher (common school era)

Known then as Substitute Teacher / Temporary Teacher (compulsory-education expansion era)

Known then as Substitute Teacher (postwar expansion era)

Known then as Substitute Teacher / Day Substitute / Guest Teacher (professionalization era)

Known then as Substitute Teachers, Short-Term (BLS SOC 25-3031)

Known today as Substitute Teachers, Short-Term (BLS SOC 25-3031)

Projected to still be called Substitute Teachers, Short-Term (BLS SOC 25-3031)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

525K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$41,670

Est.

≈ $40,602 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1852

Massachusetts enacts the first compulsory education law in the United States, requiring children between 8 and 14 to attend school at least 12 weeks per year. The law creates the institutional precondition for substitute teaching: schools that must operate on a fixed schedule regardless of teacher health or availability. By 1918, when Mississippi passes its own law, all 48 states require school attendance -- completing the structural foundation for a national substitute teacher workforce.

Beat · 1880

Urban school districts in Boston, New York, and Chicago maintain organized rosters of "supply teachers" -- adults who can be called on short notice to cover a classroom when a regular teacher is absent due to illness or other reasons. The role has no formal credentialing, no stable compensation schedule, and minimal professional status. Most supply teachers are women who were formerly full-time teachers or are seeking permanent positions. The underlying demand driver is unchanged from the one-room schoolhouse era: a responsible adult must be present with children.

Beat · 1957

Bretford Manufacturing of a Chicago suburb introduces the audiovisual cart -- a mobile table with an attached power strip originally designed for film projectors and office equipment. The cart becomes the defining physical artifact of the substitute teacher's classroom: when students see one being wheeled in, they know regular instruction has been suspended and a video or film will take its place. By the 1980s and 1990s, AV carts loaded with VCR players and CRT televisions are ubiquitous in US schools, and the "sub with the TV cart" becomes a standard feature of American childhood. The symbolic association between substitute teachers and passive video instruction shapes public perception of the role for decades.

Beat · 1995

Research by Charlotte Elkin Metzger and the Harvard Graduate School of Education's project on teacher absenteeism in the 1990s documents that the average US teacher is absent approximately 10-12 days per school year. At a national teacher count of approximately 2.7 million by 1995, this implies roughly 27-32 million substitute teacher days per year in US public schools alone -- a scale of demand that the informal per-diem substitute workforce was barely keeping up with, particularly in urban districts where both teacher absence rates and substitute-pool competition were highest.

Beat · 2020

March 2020: all 50 US states close K-12 school buildings in response to COVID-19. The substitute teacher workforce collapses almost immediately -- there is no classroom to substitute in during remote learning, and most substitutes are paid only when physically present. Many substitute teachers, disproportionately older adults or those with health vulnerabilities, permanently exit the profession rather than return when schools reopen. Oregon's licensed substitute pool drops from 8,290 in December 2019 to 4,738 by September 2021. When schools reopen fully in 2021-22, districts face an acute shortage: 20 percent of substitute requests are unfilled, and 95 percent of district leaders report the pandemic caused substitute shortages. Students now spend an estimated 20 percent of instructional time with substitutes, double the pre-pandemic rate.

Beat · 2022

Districts respond to the post-pandemic substitute shortage with the highest pay increases in the modern history of the role. The average starting substitute wage rises from $15.50 per hour in January 2022 to $18.40 per hour in the 2022-23 school year -- a 19 percent increase in a single year, largely funded by federal ESSER pandemic relief dollars. Eighty percent of the nation's 148 largest school districts increase substitute pay. Some states and districts reduce certification requirements to expand the pool: 40 percent of districts now require only a high school diploma. The tension between expanding access and maintaining quality becomes a persistent policy debate.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1852

The substitute teacher as a recognizable occupational role emerged in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, shaped directly by two intersecting forces: the rise of the common school and the enactment of compulsory attendance laws. In 1852 Massachusetts became the first state to require school attendance, mandating that children between eight and fourteen years old attend school at least twelve weeks per year. When Mississippi enacted its own law in 1918, every state in the union had formally adopted compulsory attendance requirements. This half-century of legal expansion transformed schooling from a voluntary community arrangement into an institutional system, and it created a workforce problem that had not previously existed at scale: what happens to a classroom when its teacher is ill, injured, or absent for any reason? In the one-room schoolhouse of the early nineteenth century, the answer was usually nothing -- school simply did not happen. As schools grew in size, became graded, and accumulated civic expectations that children would be supervised and instructed on fixed schedules, districts began keeping informal rosters of qualified adults who could step in. By the 1880s, urban school districts in Boston, New York, and Chicago had codified this practice: a corps of "supply teachers" or "temporary teachers" who could be called to cover an absent regular teacher on short notice. The word "substitute" for this function appears in school board records from the 1880s onward. The role carried no prestige and little pay; most early substitutes were women who had formerly taught full time or aspiring teachers who had not yet secured permanent positions. What they provided was the thing no technology then or since has fully replaced: a responsible, competent adult in the room.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace substitute teachers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+2%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 25-3031 (Substitute teachers, short-term): 556.1 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 567.0 thousand in 2035, a change of +10.9 thousand (+2.0%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (5.2% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

8.3%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 25-3031.00 Substitute Teachers, Short-Term. Shown: human-rated β = 0.083, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.167; GPT-4-rated β 0.361. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for substitute teachers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOperate the classroom's instructional technology (Google Classroom, Nearpod, Kahoot, interactive whiteboards) to deliver the lesson plan or an AI-generated backup activity

Operate the classroom's instructional technology (Google Classroom, Nearpod, Kahoot, interactive whiteboards) to deliver the lesson plan or an AI-generated backup activity; facilitate student participation through polls, quizzes, and collaborative digital tasks.^[10],[2]

Tools picking this up

Nearpod AI Create ↗MagicSchool AI ↗

Where your edge is

Arrive several minutes early to learn the room's setup: what LMS is active, whether the projector works, which apps are student-accessible. Nearpod's AI Create can generate an interactive lesson from a single topic or standard in under two minutes: useful as a backup when planned digital activities don't load.

AI is sitting alongside you hereExecute the absent teacher's lesson plan accurately, adapting delivery to the group's actual pace and engagement level

Execute the absent teacher's lesson plan accurately, adapting delivery to the group's actual pace and engagement level; when no plan is provided or plans run short, generate grade- and subject-appropriate backup activities using AI lesson-planning tools or personal reserves.^[2],[8],[9]

Tools picking this up

MagicSchool AI ↗Brisk Teaching ↗

Where your edge is

Build a subject-agnostic "emergency toolkit": a few high-engagement, low-prep activities that work across grades 3-12 (silent reading, journaling prompts, math puzzles). Supplement with MagicSchool's lesson generator to produce a grade-appropriate worksheet or activity pack in under three minutes when the teacher's plan is missing.

AI is sitting alongside you hereWrite an end-of-day note for the returning classroom teacher covering: lesson progress (topics covered, pages reached), any behavioral incidents, student absences or tardiness, and any notable student needs the teacher should follow up on.

Write an end-of-day note for the returning classroom teacher covering: lesson progress (topics covered, pages reached), any behavioral incidents, student absences or tardiness, and any notable student needs the teacher should follow up on.^[2],[9]

Tools picking this up

Brisk Teaching ↗

Where your edge is

Use a consistent note template that covers the four key areas in under five minutes. Returning teachers read these notes before they walk in the door: a clear, specific note builds your reputation faster than any other action and increases your chance of being re-requested.

Where substitute teachers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education
US median pay
$63,970 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-0.4%
Instructional Coordinators
US median pay
$77,440 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+1.6%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

Substitute teaching is the most common on-ramp to full-time teaching, and many districts actively recruit from their sub pools. Subs who build relationships at a school, demonstrate consistent classroom management, and make progress toward licensure are frequently offered long-term sub assignments that transition to permanent positions. The primary barrier is teacher certification, which can be completed through alternative certification programs in a few years while continuing to substitute. With tens of thousands of unfilled teaching positions nationally in 2025, districts are offering signing bonuses and hiring stipends to candidates who have demonstrated classroom readiness.

What you'd add

· State teacher certification or alternative route licensure (1-2 year commitment)
· Lesson planning and curriculum alignment to grade-level standards
· Formal assessment design: formative checks, summative tests, rubrics
· Parent and family communication protocols
· IEP and 504 compliance documentation

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of substitute teachers changed since 1852?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Chalk, slate boards, and the McGuffey Readers (common school era tools)
The tools of the nineteenth-century substitute teacher were the tools of all classroom teachers: a slate blackboard, chalk, McGuffey Eclectic Readers (first published 1836, dominant through the 1890s), and basic arithmetic textbooks. There was no instructional technology to operate and no lesson plan infrastructure beyond what the absent teacher left in the classroom. A substitute's entire value was embodied knowledge: general literacy, ability to lead recitation, and enough classroom authority to keep order. The absence of technology made the role both simpler (nothing to operate) and harder (nothing to fall back on if one ran out of material or lost control of the room).
Mimeograph machines, film projectors, and phonographs (early audiovisual era)
The interwar years brought audiovisual aids into the American classroom: 16mm film projectors in the 1920s-1930s, phonographs for music and language instruction, and the mimeograph machine that made lesson-plan copies cheap enough to distribute to students. For substitute teachers, these tools created both opportunity and friction. A teacher who left a film reel and a projector had effectively left a lesson plan the substitute could execute without subject-matter expertise. But operating a film projector required training, and breakdowns or jammed film were common. The mimeograph allowed absent teachers to leave reproducible worksheets; substitutes who found a prepared set of worksheets on the desk had a structured day. Those who found nothing had to improvise from first principles, as their predecessors had.
AV cart: televisions and VCR players on Bretford carts (substitute's hallmark tool)
Bretford Manufacturing of Chicago invented the audiovisual cart in 1957. Originally designed for film projectors and office equipment, the cart became synonymous with the television set as CRT televisions spread into classrooms through the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, VCR players were added to these carts, and rolling the AV cart into a classroom became culturally associated with substitute teaching to a degree that no other technological artifact has matched. A substitute who lacked a lesson plan or subject expertise could wheel in the cart, show an educational VHS tape, and keep students supervised and nominally engaged. The TV-cart era institutionalized a pattern that would later transfer to DVDs and then to streaming: the video-as-backup lesson. The practice was not without criticism from educators, but it represented the substitute teacher's first access to a technology that could partially substitute for subject-matter knowledge.
Effect on the work
The AV cart did not reduce demand for substitute teachers; it reduced the skill requirements for the job in some district contexts. Districts that stocked VHS libraries of curriculum-aligned content found it easier to fill substitutes at lower certification requirements, contributing to the broadening of substitute labor pools in the 1980s-1990s.
Internet, school computer labs, and standardized sub plans (early digital era)
The internet and school computer labs created a new instructional resource for substitutes: curated websites, online encyclopedias, and educational games that students could work through independently. Districts began posting lesson plans and absence-reporting procedures online, giving substitutes access to digital materials before they arrived at school. Standardized substitute plan forms became more common as districts formalized absent teacher obligations to leave structured activities. For the first time, a substitute arriving at a school could, in principle, pull up a lesson via a classroom projector without relying on the teacher's paper notes. In practice, unreliable school Wi-Fi, locked computer accounts, and varying technology availability in individual classrooms limited these benefits throughout the 2000s.
Google Classroom, Chromebooks, and digital learning management systems
Google Classroom, launched in 2014, and the broad K-12 Chromebook adoption it enabled fundamentally changed what a substitute teacher could access on arrival. By 2020, most US public schools operated some version of a learning management system: Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, or Seesaw. An absent teacher who had posted assignments digitally created a classroom that a substitute could effectively manage with minimal subject-matter knowledge: students opened their devices, accessed the assignment, and worked while the substitute circulated. COVID-19 remote learning (2020-2021) accelerated this digitization dramatically; when schools reopened, the technological infrastructure was far more developed than before. The downside for substitutes was new friction: familiarity with the specific LMS in use, managing student device misuse, and the expectation that digital-native students would demand more than a worksheet.
AI lesson-planning tools: MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching, Nearpod AI Create
MagicSchool AI (2023), Brisk Teaching (2023), and Nearpod AI Create (2023) represent the first tools purpose-built to address the substitute teacher's specific friction: arriving at a classroom with little or no preparation time and needing grade-appropriate, standards-aligned activity content immediately. MagicSchool's lesson plan generator produces a full structured lesson from a grade level and topic in under two minutes; 94 percent of its users report saving seven or more hours per week. Brisk Teaching, used in more than 20,000 school districts, includes a dedicated substitute plan generator. These tools address the cold-start problem that has defined substitute teaching for over a century -- the substitute who arrives to find no lesson plan is now equipped with a fallback that takes three minutes rather than improvisation under pressure. They do not change the physical presence requirement, the behavioral management challenge, or the legal mandate for a responsible adult in the room.

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Substitute Teachers, Short-Term employment and pay by year

On record since1852

Latest US employment524,770 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$41,670 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+2% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 11 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1900	25,000	n/a	Est., US Census Bureau Bulletin 23 Researched context	Report
1950	80,000	n/a	Est., NCES Researched context	Report
1970	220,000	$4,200	Est., NCES Digest of Education Statistics (employment) Researched contextEst., NCES (pay) Researched context	Report
2000	490,000	$18,500	Est., K-12 Dive (employment) Researched contextEst., NCES (pay) Researched context	Report
2019	587,120	$28,790	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	512,030	$29,370	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	374,620	$30,100	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	397,200	$35,250	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	444,530	$37,380	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	481,300	$38,470	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	524,770	$41,670	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where substitute teachers go next

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

Chalk, slate boards, and the McGuffey Readers (common school era tools)Chalk1852–1920

Mimeograph machines, film projectors, and phonographs (early audiovisual era)Mimeograph machines1920–1965

AV cart: televisions and VCR players on Bretford carts (substitute's hallmark tool)AV cart1957–1990

Internet, school computer labs, and standardized sub plans (early digital era)Internet1995–2012

Google Classroom, Chromebooks, and digital learning management systemsGoogle Classroom2012–2023

AI lesson-planning tools: MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching, Nearpod AI CreateAI lesson-planning tools2023–present

Substitute Teachers, Short-Term employment and pay by year

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