[mgkimsal]

Does it particularly matter? In most cases, people take whatever 'benefits' they're given - they don't have much leverage to take something else. Whether I want or need "great" health insurance, it might be something my employer provides, and would be part of my 'total comp'. It may not actually benefit me at all, and I have no choice in it. And likewise, if the insurance is crap, most people have no leverage to replace it with anything better anyway.

Most people can only make choices with the take home portion of salary, regardless of what 'total comp' is.

[s1artibartfast]

Im not sure what you are saying here.

Benefits absolutely play a role in the jobs people take. I have been offered two jobs with identical salaries, but one had a significant employer contribution to my 401k and stock options. you can guess which job I took.

Likewise, my mother was a teacher and one of the main reasons was the incredible healthcare. She could have gone somewhere else with her 2 masters, but it was worth a ton with a sickly husband. A full salary pension is worth a lot of direct salary compensation too.

[WalterBright]

I saw a figure once (they're hard to come by) that the value of the health insurance benefit for WA public school teachers was $36,000/year.

https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/with-a-price-tag-...

https://www.hca.wa.gov/about-hca/school-employees-benefits-b...

Those links provide facts and figures, but no figure on what the value of the employee benefit is.

I'd encourage anyone interested to ask their employer's HR dept what the value is of their employer provided health care benefit, and compare.

[filmgirlcw]

Yeah, my benefits are valued at $22,500 in Seattle at a Big Tech firm. I don’t have children so that impacts the value, but we have a very good benefits package and it’s still 1/3 less than teachers, if the numbers you cite are correct. My take home and stock are obviously ridiculously better than what I could expect as an educator, even with a Ph.D and the highest tier of experience (the CBA cap for non-administrators is ~$120k for the 20-21 school year in Seattle), so I have no regrets, but yeah HR calculates my benefits as considerably less.

[WalterBright]

And the value I cited was just for health care - not including the retirement and all the rest.

[filmgirlcw]

> Likewise, my mother was a teacher and one of the main reasons was the incredible healthcare. She could have gone somewhere else with her 2 masters, but it was worth a ton with a sickly husband. A full salary pension is worth a lot of direct salary compensation too.

Same with my mom. She was a SAH mom for 14 years and switched careers and went to grad school to be a school counselor and the career change was largely attributed to the medical benefits she’d get as an employee, which became necessary because my dad’s business was going under (she was also damn good at what she did). In addition to the benefits, the work schedule that would allow her to be home not long after I got home from school (I was 8 and my sister 14) and summer’s off made it a relatively good proposition.

Now, she has a Masters, a Specialist, and a Ph.D, so her salary was significantly higher than most teachers (and her state has salaries that are on the higher end as well as some of the best retirement options), but it still pales in comparison to what she can make in private practice.

She started late and retired a little early — I don’t think she hit her 25 years — but she still gets a very large percentage of her salary from her state and county pension. And she had the good insurance until she hit Medicare age.

For educators that start out younger, say 22, a common tactic is to do the 25 years, retire/collect retirement, and then return to work in some capacity, essentially double-dipping. The ability to do this is going to vary according to your state and county, but MANY of my moms friends did this. My mom even considered it before saying “fuck it” and enjoying retirement.

I won’t dispute that on the whole, teachers in the US are underpaid, but it’s one of the few places outside of the federal government that offers the level of benefits and retirement options that it does.

My parents live in the suburbs and take home six figures a year in retirement (her pensions and my dad’s social security), not inclusive of 401k or other investments. I very seriously doubt I’ll be able to do the same in 30 years, assuming I am even able to retire, even though my total compensation is probably close to triple hers at its peak.

[WalterBright]

> Does it particularly matter?

It sure does. It's a lot of money that pays for things like health insurance, early retirement, and retirement benefits.

> they don't have much leverage

Sure they do - the teachers' union aggressively negotiates for those benefits.