Cooks, Short Order Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Cooks, Short Order offer sit among all 150,420 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 150,420, or 0.10% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 34,490 jobs; the top three states sum to 31.7% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Dakota posts a location quotient of 4.65, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $46,010, which is 1.9 times the $23,770 at the 10th, a difference of $22,240 annually. Because the mean wage ($35,660) sits above the median ($35,620), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Cooks, Short Order runs from the $46,240 median in Arizona down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (34,490 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Cooks, Short Order stands number 206 by employment and number 781 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 3% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.1% of the group's 13,613,500 jobs. In 15 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $35,620, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 15,400 jobs, 10.2% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Manchester-Nashua, NH posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $28,190 a year, against $49,260 in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $35,620 a year is $2,968 a month gross, $1,370 every two weeks, $685 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($30,160) to the 75th ($39,990) is worth $9,830 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 $2,968 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 $39,182 would sit between the median ($35,620) and the 75th percentile ($39,990), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $30,160, is $5,460 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: Food Preparation Workers, Bartenders, Cooks, Fast Food, Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers, Dishwashers, Cooks, Institution and Cafeteria. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.