Health coverage is only worth a few thousand dollars. It's not a $50k bonus. They earn well below a typical developer salary. It's not like our cushy jobs. Yes they have extra vacation time but have to use a lot of that on unpaid planning time or additional study for ongoing certification requirements.
I agree with you. That's why I replied to a person that said they get paid below average as 1) they get paid around average as you say, and 2) they have a bunch of additional job perks that make it harder to calculate exactly.
The bureau of labor statistics is clear about the fact they are not paid less than average. Elementary and High school teachers make $73,890 mean wage compared to $65,470 for "all occupations":
You can make this more complex and say that people with equivalent training get paid more, and they do, but then they don't have the perks I mentioned, like huge vacations, having the pleasure of teaching (there's a reason so many people want to teach and supply of teachers doesn't dwindle), pension after you retire, healthcare, and so on.
"Ballpark Figure" means roughly or approximately. It is roughly around the average income. Within a standard deviation, therefore within the average salary range. A few dollars of benefits doesn't make a significant difference. Salaries have a distribution. It would be overly pedantic to say a salary is 1 cent higher than the exact average salary figure, therefore it is above average. That is not meaningful in the context of salary distribution.
