SOC 35-2021 · BLS OEWS May 2025 · released May 2026
Food Preparation Workers Salary
Nationally, the median food preparation workers earns $35,320 a year — half earn more, half earn less. Every figure on this page is published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nothing here is modelled, averaged across sources, or self-reported.
Median annual wage
$35,320
$16.98 per hour
Middle 50% earn
$29,950–$38,550
25th to 75th percentile
People employed
893,600
U.S. total, May 2025
vs. all occupations
-31%
all-occupation median $50,980
The published wage distribution
BLS publishes five points, not a curve. Each bar below spans two of them, and its area is the share of workers in that range — so the shape is derived entirely from the numbers BLS released, with nothing smoothed between them.
| Percentile | Annual wage | Hourly wage |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $25,810 | $12.41 |
| 25th percentile | $29,950 | $14.40 |
| 50th percentile (median) | $35,320 | $16.98 |
| 75th percentile | $38,550 | $18.53 |
| 90th percentile | $45,340 | $21.80 |
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Occupation: Food Preparation Workers (SOC 35-2021). Geography: United States.
Where food preparation workers are paid most
The 10 metro areas with the highest published median wage for this occupation. Employment is shown alongside pay, because the best-paying metro and the metro with the most of these jobs are often not the same place — and a top-paying market with a hundred positions in it is a different proposition from one with fifty thousand.
| # | Metro area | Median annual wage | Employment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kahului-Wailuku, HI | $46,680 | 720 |
| 2 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | $45,580 | 5,930 |
| 3 | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | $43,830 | 11,060 |
| 4 | Napa, CA | $42,810 | 620 |
| 5 | Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA | $42,640 | 1,410 |
| 6 | Yakima, WA | $41,750 | 600 |
| 7 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | $41,000 | 14,470 |
| 8 | Amherst Town-Northampton, MA | $40,140 | 510 |
| 9 | Walla Walla, WA | $40,030 | 210 |
| 10 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | $39,770 | 44,930 |
Metropolitan statistical areas only, ranked by published median annual wage. Metros where BLS suppressed this occupation's wage are absent rather than estimated. No cost-of-living adjustment is applied.
What food preparation workers do
Perform a variety of food preparation duties other than cooking, such as preparing cold foods and shellfish, slicing meat, and brewing coffee or tea.
Job Zone 2Some preparation needed
Description and job zone: U.S. Department of Labor, O*NET OnLine, database O*NET 30.3.
Related occupations
Other occupations in the same BLS major group — the grouping BLS itself uses, not a similarity score. Useful when the job title you searched sits next to the one you actually want.
Methodology
Source. Every wage figure on this page is a published estimate from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025 reference period, released May 2026. Job descriptions come from the Department of Labor's O*NET database. Nothing is interpolated between percentiles, averaged across sources, or drawn from self-reported salary submissions.
What a percentile means here. The 25th percentile is the wage below which a quarter of workers in this occupation earn. It is not a starting salary, and the median is not an average — BLS publishes the mean separately, and a handful of very high earners pull a mean upward in a way the median resists. That is why this page leads with the median and shows the spread around it.
Suppressed and top-coded figures.BLS withholds an estimate when a sample doesn't meet its publication standards; where that happens, the cell reads "—" and is never backfilled from a broader geography. BLS also top-codes very high wages, so a 90th percentile can be reported at a ceiling value rather than the true figure. This page has no route at all for an occupation whose national median BLS did not publish.
Scope and limitations. OEWS wages cover base pay, commissions, tips, and production bonuses, but exclude overtime premiums, stock, and equity compensation — which materially understates total compensation in occupations where equity is a large share of pay. Figures are one national snapshot with no cost-of-living adjustment, and say nothing about how fast the occupation is growing or what any individual employer pays.
Informational only, not professional, career, or relocation advice. Last reviewed: August 2026.