Chefs and Head Cooks
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for chefs and head cooks. Best paid: Rhode Island, at $79,930. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $69,109 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Rhode Island's $79,930 median for chefs and head cooks survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $69,109. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,470
People doing it
200,040
Highest paid
$79,930
RI
Best off, really
$69,109
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,900
Highest tenth
$98,560
Lowest, really
$42,803
LA
States with data
51
National average
$66,700
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $42,803 and $69,109. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 200,040 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $62,470. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $62,470. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for chefs and head cooks cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $42,803 to $69,109. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 200,040 workers, chefs and head cooks sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for chefs and head cooks is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Chefs and Head Cooks
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,900 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,470 |
| Top tenth earn over | $98,560 |
| This salary | $62,470 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Chefs and Head Cooks
The national median for this job
$62,470around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,900 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,470 |
| Top tenth | $98,560 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Chefs and Head Cooks, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $45,570 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Rhode Island · $79,930 |
| Spread | $34,360 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $56,080 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $57,710 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $74,740 | $61,211 | $69,109 |
| WY | $73,170 | $60,305 | $66,380 |
| TN | $69,810 | $57,941 | $62,629 |
| RI | $79,930 | $62,483 | $61,613 |
| SC | $71,860 | $56,935 | $61,104 |
| WA | $76,010 | $62,303 | $57,389 |
| MO | $64,480 | $51,896 | $56,555 |
| NM | $62,250 | $50,438 | $55,803 |
| AL | $62,400 | $49,629 | $55,161 |
| WV | $61,100 | $49,361 | $54,985 |
| GA | $66,230 | $52,690 | $54,488 |
| VT | $65,440 | $52,552 | $54,382 |
| HI | $77,360 | $58,817 | $54,154 |
| NE | $60,510 | $48,750 | $53,941 |
| NV | $62,380 | $52,302 | $53,931 |
| NJ | $74,280 | $58,530 | $53,755 |
| OK | $58,540 | $47,083 | $53,330 |
| DC | $76,420 | $59,064 | $53,305 |
| WI | $61,300 | $49,250 | $52,902 |
| PA | $63,860 | $51,531 | $52,852 |
| NC | $61,130 | $49,368 | $52,441 |
| CO | $65,400 | $52,560 | $51,843 |
| MT | $57,470 | $46,413 | $51,430 |
| NY | $70,670 | $55,327 | $51,407 |
| KS | $58,390 | $46,127 | $51,272 |
| MI | $60,070 | $48,144 | $51,117 |
| MS | $54,850 | $44,150 | $50,577 |
| MN | $62,600 | $49,746 | $50,546 |
| MA | $69,540 | $54,594 | $50,439 |
| NH | $63,400 | $53,122 | $50,427 |
| VA | $63,270 | $50,140 | $49,767 |
| UT | $59,060 | $47,007 | $49,480 |
| CT | $64,310 | $51,066 | $49,249 |
| DE | $61,440 | $48,704 | $49,071 |
| OH | $53,990 | $44,793 | $48,787 |
| AZ | $59,890 | $49,207 | $48,669 |
| TX | $56,080 | $47,240 | $48,614 |
| FL | $58,240 | $48,976 | $47,342 |
| MD | $61,590 | $49,106 | $47,233 |
| IL | $58,830 | $46,683 | $47,223 |
| ME | $57,010 | $45,459 | $46,819 |
| SD | $48,470 | $41,126 | $46,683 |
| IN | $52,190 | $42,605 | $46,217 |
| CA | $64,500 | $51,918 | $46,116 |
| OR | $63,600 | $48,268 | $46,092 |
| ID | $52,000 | $42,059 | $46,004 |
| IA | $47,990 | $39,528 | $44,530 |
| AR | $46,170 | $38,028 | $43,959 |
| KY | $48,070 | $39,239 | $43,374 |
| AK | $52,190 | $44,115 | $43,371 |
| LA | $45,570 | $37,815 | $42,803 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for chefs and head cooks as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,470, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for chefs and head cooks, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Rhode Island, at $62,483.
- Levelling out prices for chefs and head cooks is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Louisiana sits at the bottom on $42,803.
- These are distribution medians for chefs and head cooks, with a national value of $62,470. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for chefs and head cooks model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $62,483, which leads in Rhode Island.
- The price deflation applied to chefs and head cooks uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Louisiana at $42,803. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Louisiana anchors the bottom at $42,803 — and the two source series are dated independently.