Despite a substantial pay increase, teacher salaries at New Hanover County Schools are not keeping pace with rising costs of living in the area.
New Hanover teacher salaries are increasing by an average of 7.8%, according to documents from the district’s Finance Capital Bond Committee. Beginning teachers will see the highest increase of 17.1%, bringing the starting salary up from $41,000 to $48,000. The figure is just below the national average starting salary of $48,112, according to the National Association of Educators.
Increases will be allocated depending on years of experience, with the smallest increase margin set at 5%.
New Hanover County also offers annual teacher supplements starting at $7,000, with hard-to-fill positions offering up to $12,000
for teachers with 25 or more years of experience. The supplement is among the highest in the state.
Laney High School teacher Hannah Moon, who was named the 2025 Southeast Regional Teacher of the Year, spoke alongside Gov. Josh Stein when he signed the budget into law back in July.
"The work isn’t finished," Moon said. "Now is the time to keep working to give teachers and students something they can be proud of: a public education system that reveres its educators and invests in every student."
While the budget marks the largest increase in starting teacher pay in 50 years, it's still not enough to keep up with New Hanover's rising housing costs.
The cost of living in New Hanover
The average teacher salary in North Carolina was $60,323 in 2025, ranking the Tar Heel state No. 43 in the nation, according to the National Education Association. The association notes that $62,182 is the minimum living wage needed for one adult and one child to have a “modest but adequate standard of living in the most affordable metro area” in North Carolina.
California tops the average salary list at $103,552 per year, against a minimum living wage of $73,311.
An annual income of $66,360 is needed to afford to rent a two-bedroom fair market apartment, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development lists at $1,659 per month for New Hanover. The same fair market rate apartment would have cost $966 in 2020, according to HUD data.
A teacher earning the average salary of $60,323 would be considered cost-burdened by the fair market housing cost, spending just over 30% of their income on rent. The N.C. Housing Coalition states that 35,652 out of 102,355, or roughly 35% of New Hanover households, are cost burdened.
About the NC teacher salary structure
Salaries are set by the state, which funds 55% of the district’s $368 million budget for the current fiscal year. New Hanover County funds 8% of the budget, while federal dollars make up 8%. The remaining 6% is funded by grants, donations, fines and forfeitures.
In a statement responding to the raises outlined in the state budget, N.C. Association of Educators President Christina Cole said that permanent corporate tax cuts will jeopardize future pay increases.
"For public school educators, this budget tries to buy our silence while trading away our future," Cole said. "This school year, it hands working teachers a few hundred more dollars a month and hands billionaires and corporations millions of dollars every year, forever. This budget cuts the corporate tax rate once again, marching toward zero corporate taxes by 2030. Short-term crumbs for educators, long-term windfalls for corporations. After nearly three years without a state budget, educators need more — especially our veteran educators whose steps are frozen from years 15 to 24, and whose raises don't even keep pace with inflation."
The Consumer Price Index, which measures cost inflation over time, rose 3.4% over the last 12 months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. North Carolina teachers with between 15 and 24 years of experience received a bump from $60,350 to $69,320, but the budget does not change the fact that teachers with that level of experience do not receive annual raises.
North Carolina teachers earn about 75 cents for every dollar made by other college-educated professionals with similar experience, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Daniel Sheehan covers New Hanover County for the StarNews. Reach him at dsheehan@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Despite raises, cost of living still outpaces New Hanover teacher salaries
