Question: What professional field will advertise 2 million new job openings by 2010?

Answer: Teaching in America's schools.

Whether you're a student choosing a major or a corporate manager considering a life change, the nation's educational leaders want you to consider a teaching career.

But as you explore this career path, you must face a difficult issue: Are you willing and able to accept the limited compensation this field will offer for the foreseeable future?

The Labor Market

Chronic and severe teacher shortages are prevalent in America's school systems; just witness the armies of teachers who've been pressed into service with incomplete, emergency or out-of-field certifications. And teacher supply will continue to lag demand, largely due to the tidal wave of retirements among the predominantly middle-aged workforce.

"Retirement is taking a lot of people out of the supply of teachers," says B.J. Bryant, executive director of the American Association for Employment in Education Inc., a group based in Columbus, Ohio. About 375,000 public school teachers will retire between 1999 and 2009, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in Washington, DC.

Another factor is increased student enrollment in the nation's primary and secondary schools. Total enrollment in public and private schools will grow from 52.2 million in 1997 to 54.3 million in 2007, says the NCES.

Demand is also increased by policies such as California's class-size reductions; second-grade math can tell you fewer students per classroom equals more teachers per school.

Geography

The US needs new teachers in a big way, but demand is distributed unevenly, in complex patterns across the country.

Regionally, while primary and secondary enrollment is expected to rise by 8 percent in the West from 1999 to 2011, the South will see a meager 1 percent rise, and the Northeast will see a 4 percent decline, according to NCES. These enrollment fluctuations are bound to affect regional demand for teachers.

On a smaller geographic scale, there are substantial divergences in projected enrollments, sometimes even among neighboring states. For example, while enrollment in Virginia should increase 1.4 percent from 2002 to 2007, West Virginia's student population is expected to drop by 2 percent during the same period, says an NCES state-by-state study.

Where are the new educators going? "Most people coming out of teachers colleges don't want to teach in urban areas," says Roy Einreinhofer, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification in Mashpee, Massachusetts. "Everyone wants to teach in well-to-do suburban neighborhoods," Einreinhofer says.

In addition, "the rural districts are really hurting, especially in areas like special education," says Janice Jones, a high school director of personnel in Evanston, Illinois.

Pay

The difficulty of providing competitive compensation is one reason leading educators worry the teacher supply will continue to fall short of demand.

While most other professionals improved their standard of living during the roaring '90s, teacher pay was nearly stagnant. After adjusting for inflation, the average city teacher's salary rose by just $250 for the entire decade, according to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a union based in Washington, DC.

Teachers in big cities tend to earn more than their counterparts in smaller communities. In 1999, new teachers with a bachelor's degree earned a minimum of $37,045 in the New York City borough of Yonkers; in Lincoln, Nebraska, the same group earned a minimum of $20,883, says the AFT.

Starting teachers in Evanston currently earn about $40,000, says Jones. "It's a very good salary, but you've got to look at where you're going to live," she adds. In the East, for example, although Boston teachers with a master's degree earn a maximum that places them 15th among their colleagues in the top 100 US cities, that rank drops to 81 when cost of living is considered.

Due to the 2001 recession and tax revenue shortfalls, many states and municipalities aren't inclined to provide the magnitude of salary increase that would begin to make teachers' pay more competitive. And slack demand for 2002 college graduates is denying newly minted teachers the leverage to negotiate a better wage.