Teacher Attrition and Mobility Over Time

Abstract

We use 35 years of data on public school teachers in Washington to calculate several different measures of teacher attrition and mobility. We explore how these rates vary over time and their relationship with the state unemployment rate. Annual rates of teacher attrition from the workforce have been between 5% and 8% for each of the past 35 years, and there is a strong negative relationship between unemployment rates and these rates of attrition. This history suggests that teacher attrition is likely to increase as the economy recovers after the pandemic, but this increase is likely to be modest.