Teacher job satisfaction remains high overall in the latest international TALIS results, but the headline masks meaningful differences in stress, pay, contracts, and classroom demands. In 2024, 89% of lower-secondary teachers across the OECD reported being satisfied with their jobs overall. At the same time, 19% said they experienced a lot of stress at work. These figures describe survey responses, not causal effects.
Contents
- Current satisfaction across countries
- How satisfaction changed since 2018
- Career commitment and plans to leave
- Stress and health burdens
- Employment conditions and satisfaction
- Salary and contract satisfaction
- Classroom management demands
Current satisfaction across countries
TALIS 2024 measures job satisfaction among lower-secondary teachers. The OECD definition used here is specific: teachers reported that, all in all, they were satisfied with their jobs. It does not mean that every aspect of the job was rated positively.
The OECD average was 89% in 2024. Results varied across the countries covered by the supplied country notes, from 79% in Japan and France to 94% in Iceland. Satisfaction was 93% in Cyprus, 92% in Morocco, and 92% in the United Arab Emirates. Czechia recorded 91%, while Finland and South Africa each recorded 85%.
| Country or group | Satisfied with job overall | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| OECD average | 89% | 2024 |
| Iceland | 94% | 2024 |
| Cyprus | 93% | 2024 |
| Morocco | 92% | 2024 |
| United Arab Emirates | 92% | 2024 |
| Czechia | 91% | 2024 |
| Finland | 85% | 2024 |
| South Africa | 85% | 2024 |
| Japan | 79% | 2024 |
| France | 79% | 2024 |
The OECD average and the country results come from the Executive summary: Results from TALIS 2024 and the OECD country notes for Iceland, Cyprus, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Czechia, Finland, South Africa, Japan, and France.
How satisfaction changed since 2018
The 2024 results also show different directions of change since 2018. South Africa’s share of satisfied lower-secondary teachers increased by 7 percentage points between 2018 and 2024. The United Arab Emirates increased by 3 percentage points.
Other countries recorded declines. France fell by 5 percentage points, Japan by 3 points, and Finland by 2 points over the same period. Satisfaction did not change in the supplied comparisons for Cyprus, Czechia, or Iceland.
These are changes in reported survey shares across two measurement periods. They should not be read as evidence that a particular policy or working condition caused the movement. The relevant 2024 country-note sources are the OECD pages for South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, France, Japan, Finland, Cyprus, Czechia, and Iceland.
Career commitment and plans to leave
TALIS 2018 provides a broader view of how teachers evaluated their careers. Across the OECD, 90% of teachers said they were satisfied with their job overall. Eighty-three percent recommended their school as a good place to work, and 76% said the advantages of being a teacher clearly outweighed the disadvantages.
Several measures point to continuing professional commitment. Seventy-six percent said they would still choose to work as a teacher if deciding again. Sixty-six percent disagreed that it would have been better to choose another profession, while 91% disagreed that they regretted deciding to become a teacher.
However, satisfaction did not eliminate mobility concerns. One in five teachers, or 20%, said they would like to change to another school if possible. Across 44 TALIS countries and economies, higher teacher job satisfaction was associated with a lower reported intention to leave teaching prematurely. This is an association in the 2018 data, not a demonstrated causal relationship.
These 2018 measures are reported in What TALIS 2018 implies for policy: TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II). They are not relabeled as 2024 figures.
Stress and health burdens
High overall satisfaction can coexist with substantial strain. In 2024, 19% of lower-secondary teachers across the OECD reported experiencing stress a lot in their work. Ten percent said their job negatively affected their mental health a lot, and 8% said it negatively affected their physical health a lot.
The country results show different combinations of satisfaction and strain. In Japan, 27% reported experiencing a lot of work stress, while 14% reported a lot of negative mental-health impact and 12% a lot of negative physical-health impact. South Africa reported 30% for work stress, 17% for mental health, and 13% for physical health. In France, the corresponding figures were 18%, 13%, and 10%.
| Country or group | A lot of work stress | Mental health affected a lot | Physical health affected a lot |
|---|---|---|---|
| OECD average | 19% | 10% | 8% |
| Japan | 27% | 14% | 12% |
| South Africa | 30% | 17% | 13% |
| France | 18% | 13% | 10% |
The response category for the stress and health items is “a lot.” The figures are from the TALIS 2024 executive summary and the OECD country notes for Japan, South Africa, and France.
Employment conditions and satisfaction
Contract status and working time provide context for job satisfaction, but the supplied results do not establish that one condition produces another. In the United States, 66% of lower-secondary teachers had a permanent contract in 2024, 5% were employed part-time, and 75% were satisfied with their terms of employment apart from salary.
Morocco reported a higher permanent-contract share, at 88%, and a larger part-time share, at 25%. Half of Moroccan lower-secondary teachers were satisfied with their terms of employment apart from salary. The definition of part-time in these country-note figures is working up to 90% of full-time hours.
Job flexibility was considered highly important by most part-time teachers in both comparisons. Only 2% of part-time lower-secondary teachers in the United States did not consider job flexibility highly important, compared with 11% in Morocco.
The country-specific figures come from the OECD United States country note and Morocco country note.
Salary and contract satisfaction
Salary is a distinct part of the satisfaction picture. Across the OECD in TALIS 2018, 39% of teachers reported being satisfied with their salary, while 66% were satisfied with their terms of employment apart from salary. In the United States, the 2024 share satisfied with salary was also 39%.
Contract arrangements in the TALIS 2018 systems included 82% of teachers holding permanent contracts, 6% holding fixed-term contracts longer than one year, and 12% holding fixed-term contracts of one year or less. These are TALIS 2018 system aggregates, not 2024 estimates.
The contrast between the 39% salary-satisfaction figure and the 66% satisfaction figure for other employment terms shows why a single overall job-satisfaction percentage does not describe every employment feature. The 2018 measures come from TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II); the United States 2024 salary result comes from the United States TALIS 2024 country note.
Classroom management demands
Classroom conditions are directly relevant to readers focused on classroom management. In the United States in 2024, maintaining classroom discipline was a source of stress for 43% of lower-secondary teachers. Being held responsible for student achievement was a source of stress for 38%, and being held responsible for students’ social and emotional well-being was a source of stress for 36%.
Taken together, these measures place classroom management within a wider set of responsibilities. Discipline is the most frequently reported of the three listed stress sources in the United States, but academic achievement and social-emotional well-being also affect substantial shares of teachers. The figures describe what teachers identified as sources of stress; they do not rank the severity of each source, and they do not indicate how often a particular incident occurred.
The composition of classes also matters for the work teachers describe. In the United States, 85% of lower-secondary teachers reported that a randomly chosen class had students in at least two of three categories: behavioural problems, language difficulties, or special education needs. Teachers reported spending 17% of class time keeping order. In France, the comparable share of class time spent keeping order was 18%.
These figures measure reported demands and classroom time, not the effectiveness of a particular management strategy. They also do not show that classroom management demands caused a given level of overall job satisfaction. The results are from the OECD United States country note and France country note.