IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32862.html

The Effects of Teacher Strikes on Compensation, Working Conditions, and Productivity

Author

Listed:
  • Melissa Arnold Lyon
  • Matthew A. Kraft
  • Matthew P. Steinberg

Abstract

We examine how teacher strikes in the United States affect compensation, working conditions, and productivity with an original dataset of 745 teacher strikes between 2007 and 2024. Using an event study framework, we find that the average strike leads to a 6% ($7,629) increase in combined annual wages and benefits and a 0.5 student (3.2%) decline in pupil-teacher ratios after five years. There is little evidence of sizable impacts on student achievement up to five years post-strike, though strikes lasting 10 or more days decrease math achievement in the short-term.

Suggested Citation

  • Melissa Arnold Lyon & Matthew A. Kraft & Matthew P. Steinberg, 2024. "The Effects of Teacher Strikes on Compensation, Working Conditions, and Productivity," NBER Working Papers 32862, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32862
    Note: ED
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32862.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Langen, Henrika & Laine, Liisa, 2025. "Heterogeneous Effects of a Teacher Strike on Education and Labor Market Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 17937, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Derenoncourt, Ellora & Gerard, Francois & Lagos, Lorenzo & Montialoux, Claire, 2025. "What Do (Thousands of) Union Do? Union-Specific Pay Premia and Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 18065, IZA Network @ LISER.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • J52 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32862. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.