Waiters and Waitresses Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Waiters and Waitresses worker at that point in the distribution, so $45,350 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

May 2024 employment stood at 2,302,690, or 1.49% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 243,300 jobs; the top three states sum to 28.8% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Nevada posts a location quotient of 1.75, 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 $62,510, which is 3.4 times the $18,500 at the 10th, a difference of $44,010 annually. Because the mean wage ($38,360) sits above the median ($33,760), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Vermont posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $60,910, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Waiters and Waitresses stands number 11 by employment and number 810 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 2% less than its group median, and it supplies 16.9% 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 $33,760, 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 135,820 jobs, 5.9% 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, Gadsden, AL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $22,280 a year, against $78,510 in Kahului-Wailuku, 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $2,813 a month before tax, $1,298 biweekly, $649 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($25,690) to the 75th ($45,350) is worth $19,660 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 $37,136 would sit between the median ($33,760) and the 75th percentile ($45,350), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $25,690, is $8,070 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Cooks, Restaurant, First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Food Preparation Workers, Bartenders, Cooks, Fast Food, Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.