Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $29,890. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 89,580 people in May 2024, 0.06% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 31,750 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 47.0% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Louisiana, whose location quotient of 3.91 says this work is 3.91 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $24,040 or less, and one in ten earns $47,360 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.0 to 1 and the annual gap is $23,320. The mean ($35,990) versus median ($34,830) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other runs from the $62,110 median in Hawaii down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (31,750 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other stands number 289 by employment and number 791 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 1% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 13,613,500 jobs. In 14 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $34,830, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 12,980 jobs, 14.5% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Baton Rouge, LA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,480 a year, against $43,770 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers, All Other paycheck, gross, is $1,340 every two weeks on an annual $34,830, which is $2,902 a month and $670 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($29,890) to the 75th ($38,860) is worth $8,970 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $38,313 would sit between the median ($34,830) and the 75th percentile ($38,860), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $29,890, is $4,940 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: First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Food Preparation Workers, Bartenders, Cooks, Fast Food, Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers, Dishwashers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.