Cooks, Restaurant Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Cooks, Restaurant worker at that point in the distribution, so $43,610 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 1,452,130 Cooks, Restaurant jobs in May 2024, which is 0.94% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Hawaii, where the location quotient is 2.08, meaning the occupation holds 2.08 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 160,270 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 29.0% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $28,010 or less, and one in ten earns $47,340 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $19,330. The mean ($37,730) versus median ($36,830) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Cooks, Restaurant runs from the $46,280 median in Massachusetts down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (160,270 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Cooks, Restaurant stands number 20 by employment and number 765 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations, the group median wage is $34,460 across 17 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 7% more than its group median, and it supplies 10.7% of the group's 13,613,500 jobs. In 20 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $36,830, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 62,890 jobs, 4.3% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Mayaguez, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $23,790 a year, against $53,460 in Kahului-Wailuku, HI. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $36,830 a year is $3,069 a month gross, $1,417 every two weeks, $708 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($31,310) to the 75th ($43,610) is worth $12,300 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $3,069 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $40,513 would sit between the median ($36,830) and the 75th percentile ($43,610), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $31,310, is $5,520 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Fast Food and Counter Workers, Waiters and Waitresses, First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Food Preparation Workers, Bartenders, Cooks, Fast Food. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.