The COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S. education system in ways that dramatically affected the jobs of K–12 employees. However, there remains considerable uncertainty about the nature and degree of staffing challenges during the pandemic. We draw on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and State Education Agencies (SEA) to describe patterns in K–12 education employment and to highlight the limitations of available data. Data from the BLS suggest overall employment in the K–12 labor market declined by 9 percent at the onset of the pandemic and remained well below pre-pandemic levels more than two years later. SEA data suggest that teachers did not leave the profession en masse as many predicted, with turnover decreasing in the summer of 2020 and then increasing modestly in 2021 back to pre-pandemic levels. We explore possible explanations for these patterns including weak hiring through the summer of 2020 and high attrition among K–12 instructional support and noninstructional staff. State vacancy data also suggest that schools faced substantial challenges filling open positions during the 2021–22 academic year. Our analyses illustrate the imperative to build nationally representative, detailed, and timely data systems on the K–12 education labor market to better inform policy.

COVID-19 大流行以极大影响 K-12 员工工作的方式颠覆了美国教育体系。但是，大流行期间人员配置挑战的性质和程度仍然存在很大的不确定性。我们利用来自劳工统计局 (BLS) 和州教育机构 (SEA) 的数据来描述 K-12 教育就业模式并强调可用数据的局限性。BLS 的数据表明，K-12 劳动力市场的整体就业率在大流行开始时下降了 9%，并且在两年多后仍远低于大流行前的水平。SEA 数据表明，教师并没有像许多人预测的那样大量离开这个行业，2020 年夏季的人员流动率下降，然后在 2021 年小幅上升，回到大流行前的水平。我们探讨了这些模式的可能解释，包括 2020 年夏季的招聘疲软以及 K-12 教学支持和非教学人员的高流失率。州职位空缺数据还表明，学校在 2021-22 学年填补空缺职位方面面临巨大挑战。我们的分析说明了在 K-12 教育劳动力市场上建立具有全国代表性、详细和及时的数据系统以更好地为政策提供信息的必要性。