Special Education Teacher Statistics 2026: Job Market, Pay, Demand & Workforce

SchoolHires had 757 open special education teacher listings from 135 employers on November 13, 2026.

219 were first posted in the previous 14 days and 331 in the previous 30 days.

The benefit special education teacher listings named most often on November 13, 2026 was health insurance, in 40.7% of listings, followed by dental or vision coverage (34.1%).

A listing that does not mention a benefit may still offer it.

To browse the openings themselves, see all special education teacher listings.

BLS publishes no special education teacher-only wage, so the figure here is for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school (SOC 25-2052), in elementary and secondary schools, the BLS occupation for K–5 special education teachers, counting public and private schools together; middle and secondary special education teachers have codes of their own.

The median wage for that occupation was $65,080 a year in May 2025 (BLS OEWS, Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School (SOC 25-2052), Elementary and Secondary Schools (NAICS 611100, all ownerships), May 2025).

The middle half of workers in that occupation earned $59,730 to $80,280 a year.

Employers hiring special education teachers on SchoolHires advertise a median of $63,500 a year across 40 employers on November 13, 2026; this is advertised pay, not earnings.

For pay by state, percentile and experience, see the special education teacher salary guide.

Texas had the most open special education teacher listings on November 13, 2026, with 85 (11.2% of the national total).

Ohio followed with 78 (10.3%).

To browse the openings in one state, start with special education teacher openings in Texas.

135 employers had open special education teacher listings on SchoolHires on November 13, 2026, and the five largest posted 42.4% of them.

65 employers (48.1%) had exactly one open special education teacher listing.

BLS counted 584,100 special education teacher jobs in 2025, with a median pay of $67,170 across all employers; private elementary and secondary schools employ about 8% of them, at a median of $61,290 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 data).

In privately owned elementary and secondary schools alone, BLS counted 11,830 kindergarten and elementary special education teachers (SOC 25-2052) on payroll in May 2025, with a median annual wage of $61,030 (BLS OEWS, industry 611105).

In 2021–22, 2,011 U.S. private schools had a special education program emphasis, with 25,507 full-time-equivalent teachers and 131,379 students (NCES PSS 2021–22).

In 2020–21, 4.9% of private school teachers had special education as their main teaching assignment, against 14.4% of public school teachers (NCES National Teacher and Principal Survey 2020–21, Digest Table 209.42).

BLS projects employment of kindergarten and elementary special education teachers (SOC 25-2052), counted across public and private schools, to change by -0.4% from 2025 to 2035, from 259,100 to 258,100 jobs, with about 16,400 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections 2025–35).

For how to enter the field, see the special education teacher career guide.

Listing figures are computed from every active, paid special education teacher listing on SchoolHires at the time shown, and refreshed every six hours.

Listings on a job board are not a random sample of all special education teacher jobs, so read them as a picture of current hiring, not of total employment.

This page is published only while the live sample has at least 300 listings from 25 employers.

Advertised pay is the midpoint of the range an employer posts, or its single figure, and hourly and annual postings are never converted into each other.

The headline is the employer median: each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a group posting hundreds of openings counts once.

A pay figure needs at least 30 listings from 10 employers and is withheld when one employer posted more than half of them.

Federal figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the other sources listed below, quoted as published, with the year in each sentence.

BLS splits special education teachers by grade level; the BLS median shown is the kindergarten and elementary code (25-2052) in all elementary and secondary schools, public and private together, and the secondary code runs higher. OEWS counts payroll employees only, while the Occupational Outlook Handbook job count comes from BLS Employment Projections and includes the self-employed.