Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop offer sit among all 427,150 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 427,150, or 0.28% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 42,450 jobs; the top three states sum to 28.3% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Nevada posts a location quotient of 1.66, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $22,010 or less, and one in ten earns $42,600 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $20,590. The mean ($32,030) versus median ($30,380) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 42,450 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Hawaii would lead at $43,070. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop stands number 84 by employment and number 825 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 12% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.1% of the group's 13,613,500 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $30,380, 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 15,840 jobs, 3.7% 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, Lafayette, LA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $21,060 a year, against $43,850 in Urban Honolulu, HI. 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, $30,380 a year is $2,532 a month gross, $1,168 every two weeks, $584 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($26,630) to the 75th ($35,840) is worth $9,210 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 $2,532 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 $33,418 would sit between the median ($30,380) and the 75th percentile ($35,840), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $26,630, is $3,750 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Food Preparation Workers, Bartenders, Cooks, Fast Food, Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers, Dishwashers, Cooks, Institution and Cafeteria. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.