Occupation / job
Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop
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
The midpoint of $31,200 for Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop runs $1,568 a month behind the $50,020 typical American job. Over a working life that is not a gap in income, it is a gap in everything income buys later.
432,690 people do this work. An occupation this large has a published, well-known going rate — which means less scope to be underpaid and less scope to negotiate above it.
These roles are the entry point to the whole food sector and suit people who want work that starts this week and teaches the operation from the inside.
No verified preparation time is on file for Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop. 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 of Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop earn under $27,570 and a quarter over $36,250: 1.3x, and $8,680 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
The bottom quarter is under $27,570, $22,450 short of the $50,020 typical American job. The question worth answering before entering Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop is how long people spend in that quarter, because the median says nothing about it.
Avoid it if you need a path upward that does not depend entirely on one manager deciding to promote you.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 432,690 people employed as Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop; 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 1.3x ratio from $27,570 to $36,250 makes $31,200 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $27,570 at the 25th percentile, $31,200 at the midpoint, $36,250 at the 75th. $8,680 separates the quarter of Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $27,570 and $36,250 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $31,200. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $5,050; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $8,680.
$5,050 separates $31,200 from the $36,250 top quarter, while only $3,630 separates it from $27,570. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $13.25 at the bottom quarter, $15.00 at the midpoint, $17.42 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop. The self-employed are excluded, so $31,200 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop, the hourly figure is $31,200 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