Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers worker at that point in the distribution, so $36,880 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

The occupation employed 522,010 people in May 2024, 0.34% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 78,320 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 34.6% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Nevada, whose location quotient of 2.56 says this work is 2.56 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $22,260 or less, and one in ten earns $46,380 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $24,120. The mean ($34,190) versus median ($32,670) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers runs from the $47,190 median in Hawaii down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (78,320 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers stands number 67 by employment and number 817 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 5% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.8% of the group's 13,613,500 jobs. In 13 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $32,670, 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 37,610 jobs, 7.2% 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, Wilmington, NC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $22,640 a year, against $56,880 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $2,722 a month before tax, $1,257 biweekly, $628 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($27,830) to the 75th ($36,880) is worth $9,050 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $35,937 would sit between the median ($32,670) and the 75th percentile ($36,880), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $27,830, is $4,840 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 Servers, Nonrestaurant, Chefs and Head Cooks, Cooks, Short Order, Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other, Cooks, All Other, Cooks, Private Household. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.