NC Teacher Vacancies Drop in 2025: What It Means for Schools and Students (2025)

By Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter

North Carolina schools have fewer teacher and bus driver vacancies this fall, according to a new survey from the North Carolina School Superintendents Association, which says it's likely the result of fewer jobs in schools themselves.

At the start of this school year, all 115 public school districts reported 2,155 vacancies to the association

That's a big drop from the 3,142 vacancies the association reported the year before.

But the association's executive director, Jack Hoke, said it is still a lot of vacancies, and that's affecting class sizes and elective offerings.

"Any vacancy is a lost opportunity for students to have a great teacher," he said. "So one vacancy is a challenge, and you see the number that we have."

Hoke said there's still a problem with not enough people wanting to become teachers, because of low salaries in comparison to other jobs that require four-year college degrees. He said state lawmakers need to fix that and help make teachers feel appreciated.

"I don't think we can simply recruit our way out of this," Hoke said. "We need to retain the teachers we have, and as a state, we must invest in making the profession sustainable, competitive compensation, better working conditions and real respect for [the] experience and expertise of our educators."

He said this drop in vacancies doesn't really mean that more people want to become teachers.

Schools have fewer teachers in general now, thus not as many people they need to hire.

Enrollment has gone down and temporary federal funding during the pandemic is now gone, expiring Sept. 30, 2024. The biggest spikes in vacancies -- topping 4,400 teachers -- occurred in 2022, when that funding came in and schools hired more people with it.

State Department of Public Instruction data shows that full-time employment in schools hit a 21-year low last school year.

Data aren't yet available for the current school year, but the number of full-time employees in the state's traditional public schools during the 2024-25 school year was 172,848 total employees. That's the lowest number since the 2003-04 school year, when schools employed 169,109 full-time personnel.

The pattern is the same for teachers. The state's traditional public schools employed 90,481 full-time teachers last year, the lowest number since the 2003-04 school year, when they employed 87,947 full-time teachers.

That's partly related to a shift in public school students to private schools, homeschools and public charter schools, as well as declining birth rates. Traditional public school districts enrolled 1,362,477 students last year -- just a bit higher than the 1,318,529 enrolled during the 2003-04 school year.

Based on the trends he's seeing -- two years in a row of declining teacher vacancies -- Hoke believes things are getting a bit better.

"I'm fairly optimistic that the vacancies will continue to decrease and stabilize," Hoke said. "But also the reality is, [there are] not enough teachers to meet the demand nationwide."

The association's survey doesn't publish a breakdown of individual districts -- a condition of the survey.

Earlier this month, the Wake County Public School System reported publicly a continued drop in vacancies, as well, to less than 1.5% of total teaching positions. The district had 11,793 total teaching positions in September, compared to 11,887 in September 2023. It had 148 vacancies this month, compared to 252 in September of 2023. That means the number of teachers in the district has increased by only 10 in those two years.

Bus driver vacancies statewide have dropped to 1,223, from 1,315 last year. The state doesn't track the number of bus drivers on its school statistical websites, but it does show that the state has nearly 11,000 bus routes.

Wake County officials have credited their improvements in hiring with pay increases and bonuses. The district has increased its bus driver team by more than 40 drivers since last year.

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