Looking Back and Moving Forward: COVID-19’s Impact on the Teacher Labor Market and Implications for the Future

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic teachers reported high levels of stress and burnout, raising concerns about a potential increase in teacher turnover and future teacher shortages. We use administrative data from the 2018 to 2019 through 2022 to 2023 school years to examine how the pandemic affected teacher turnover in Arkansas. We find relatively stable turnover entering the 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022 school years but an increase of 5 percentage points (20%) over pre-pandemic levels entering the 2022 to 2023 school year, representing both higher rates of transitions out of the education sector but also more likely movements to other positions outside regular teaching within the education sector. Importantly, we also find significant heterogeneity in turnover by teacher and school characteristics suggesting a decline in aggregate teacher quality, diversity, and experience. These results suggest potential lasting effects on the composition and quality of the teacher labor force.