Occupation / job
First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers
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
At $44,080, First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers lands just under the $50,020 national midpoint — $5,940 apart, inside the range a single promotion or a move between states closes.
With 1,223,240 employed, this is one of the biggest occupations in the country. Work at this scale is always available and rarely scarce, and the wage on this page is what that combination produces.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 1,223,240 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
$35,980 to $54,570 — 1.5x, or $1,549 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
A quarter of First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers earn under $35,980, which is $14,040 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
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 1,223,240 people employed as First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers; 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
At 1.5x between $35,980 and $54,570 this is a normally shaped occupation. $44,080 is what the middle of First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $35,980 and $54,570. That is $18,590 of range, with $44,080 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $54,570. Reaching it from the $44,080 midpoint is $10,490 a year; reaching it from the $35,980 that the bottom quarter of First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers earn is $18,590.
From $44,080 it is $8,100 down to the bottom quarter and $10,490 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers is $21.19 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.29 and $26.23, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $44,080 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers, the hourly figure is $44,080 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else