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According to data released in December from the National Center for Education Statistics, public schools added 118,000 employees last year even as they served 135,000 fewer students.
You may have heard this story before. In fact, I wrote a nearly identical sentence around this time last year.
But enrollment keeps falling as staffing levels rise. Since 2018-19, the last year before the pandemic, student enrollment is down 1.4 million (a 2.8% decrease) while employment is up by 479,000 (a gain of 7.3%).
Part of the staffing gains comes as the result of schools adding 90,000 teacher jobs. Combined with declining enrollment numbers, that has allowed most states and districts to effectively lower their teacher-to-student ratios.
Public Schools Added 121,000 Employees in 2024 — Even as They Served Fewer Kids
However, most of the employment gains are not coming from classroom teachers. In raw numbers, from 2018-19 to 2024-25 schools added 389,000 non-teaching jobs.
The gains are widespread across staffing categories. The numbers of district administrators and support staffers are up 25.9% and 16.9%, respectively. But so are school-based roles including paraprofessionals (up 16.6%) and guidance counselors (up 12.2%). To help address student attendance and mental health needs, schools have also added 22.4% more support service staff, which NCES defines as employees “who nurture but do not instruct students” and includes “attendance officers; staff providing health, speech pathology, audiology or social services; and supervisors of the preceding staff; coaches, athletic advisers and athletic trainers.”
(The 74)
Only two categories of school employees, librarians and media support staff, did not see an increase over this six-year time period. That continues a steady trend over the last few decades as schools employ fewer full-time librarians.
Analysts like myself and many others warned of a fiscal cliff once the infusion of federal COVID relief funds, appropriated between March 2020 and March 2021, stopped flowing. That money is long gone now, and yet schools continue to hire. Were we all wrong?
We were certainly off on the timing. Back in 2022, when I was part of the team at the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, we forecasted a “bloodletting” in the 2024-25 school year. As I write this in early 2026, with schools continuing to add staff, that projection looks wildly overblown.
Interactive: Data From 9,500 Districts Finds Even More Staff and Fewer Students
One reason we got the call wrong is that we underestimated how much state governments were using their one-time federal funds to shore up rainy-day funds and build up their budget reserves. More importantly, the broader economy has held up better than many experts anticipated.
But perhaps we were just too early. After all, the fundamentals have not changed. Because schools are largely funded based on how many students they serve, lower enrollments will translate into lower revenue totals. And by hiring more people and raising salaries, districts have committed themselves to much higher personnel costs. These trends cannot continue to move in opposite directions forever.
4 Things Districts Should Do Right Now — Before the Fiscal Cliff
Meanwhile, while the NCES employment figures cited above are the most accurate measure of total staff time available in schools, they take time to collect. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects monthly data on the total number of employees in a given industry or sector. That information comes out faster, and the latest numbers suggest that public school employment may be starting to plateau.
For now, there’s still no sign of a peak or cliff in either data source, but what happens next will largely depend on the direction of the broader economy.
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