Occupation / job
Chefs and Head Cooks
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A $62,470 midpoint puts Chefs and Head Cooks $12,450 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 25% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
National employment is 200,040. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
Supervising a kitchen or a service floor suits people who can run a rota, absorb a no-show and keep the pass moving in the same shift.
No verified preparation time is on file for Chefs and Head Cooks. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $48,440 and a quarter above $78,750: a 1.6x ratio, $30,310 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
At $48,440 — $23.28 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Chefs and Head Cooks still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you cannot be the one who covers — the supervisor absorbs every gap in the rota personally.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 200,040 people employed as Chefs and Head Cooks; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $62,470 as where you might be after years in Chefs and Head Cooks, and $48,440 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Chefs and Head Cooks runs $48,440 to $78,750 — $30,310 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $62,470.
Getting to $78,750, the 75th percentile, is worth $16,280 a year more than the $62,470 midpoint and $30,310 more than the $48,440 a quarter of Chefs and Head Cooks settle for.
The climb from $62,470 to $78,750 is $16,280; the drop to $48,440 is $14,030. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Chefs and Head Cooks and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $30.03 at the midpoint for Chefs and Head Cooks, $23.28 at the 25th percentile and $37.86 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Chefs and Head Cooks for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $62,470 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $62,470 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Chefs and Head Cooks, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else