Occupation / job
Food Servers, Nonrestaurant
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 a $35,360 midpoint, Food Servers, Nonrestaurant sits 29% under the $50,020 national figure. The shortfall is $1,221 a month, which is roughly the size of a rent difference between metros — worth checking before the job is the thing you blame.
This is a large occupation: 293,900 people work as Food Servers, Nonrestaurant. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
Serving work suits people who are quick, physically durable and able to be pleasant on demand — and whose income can tolerate depending on how busy a Friday was.
How long it takes to become one of the 293,900 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
The quarters sit at $31,190 and $38,500, $609 a month apart at a ratio of 1.2x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
The bottom quarter of Food Servers, Nonrestaurant earns under $31,190 — $18,830 below the $50,020 national midpoint, or $14.99 an hour. A floor that low means the occupation cannot be judged on its median alone; a quarter of the people in it are somewhere else entirely.
Avoid it if you need your income to be independent of how busy a Friday was, or of a stranger’s generosity.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 293,900 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.2x spread means the top quarter of Food Servers, Nonrestaurant is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $31,190 and $38,500 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $31,190 and $38,500. That is $7,310 of range, with $35,360 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $31,190 and $38,500 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $35,360. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $3,140; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $7,310.
There is $4,170 between $31,190 and $35,360, and $3,140 between $35,360 and $38,500. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Food Servers, Nonrestaurant at the bottom of it.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $17.00 at the midpoint for Food Servers, Nonrestaurant, $14.99 at the 25th percentile and $18.50 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 Food Servers, Nonrestaurant for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $35,360 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Food Servers, Nonrestaurant, the hourly figure is $35,360 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