The article aims at describing some characteristics of the teaching work and at comparing the payment of teachers to the payment of other professionals with the same level of instruction. With this intention, the authors analyzed microdata from PNAD and School Census in 2009 through descriptive and inferential techniques. The results pointed out challenges in relation to 1. formation, due to the fact that one third of primary education teachers and 50% of childhood education teachers are not graduated; 2. working conditions, once an expressive number of teachers work in more than one school and teach a high number of students per class; and 3. payment, whereas teachers' socioeconomic level and income are inferior to other professionals' socioeconomic level and income even if the latter have equivalent or lower level of instruction than the former.
teachers; working conditions; salaries
