Cooks, Fast Food
What the pay figures show
- Hawaii pays cooks, fast food the most, at $48,120. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $35,553 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Hawaii leads for cooks, fast food at $48,120 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $35,553 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$30,890
People doing it
641,070
Highest paid
$48,120
HI
Best off, really
$35,553
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$22,580
Highest tenth
$42,910
Lowest, really
$22,298
MS
States with data
51
National average
$32,390
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $22,298 up to $35,553.
- Roughly 641,070 people hold this job nationally, earning $30,890 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $30,890, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- The nominal spread for cooks, fast food approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $22,298 to $35,553, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 641,070 are employed nationally in cooks, fast food, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for cooks, fast food, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Cooks, Fast Food
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $22,580 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $30,890 |
| Top tenth earn over | $42,910 |
| This salary | $30,890 |
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 Cooks, Fast Food
The national median for this job
$30,890around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $22,580 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $30,890 |
| Top tenth | $42,910 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cooks, Fast Food, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $22,670 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $48,120 |
| Spread | $25,450 |
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 | $28,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $29,102 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $48,120 | $38,613 | $35,553 |
| DC | $44,670 | $36,558 | $32,994 |
| VT | $38,230 | $31,873 | $32,983 |
| NH | $38,590 | $33,187 | $31,503 |
| CA | $42,050 | $35,149 | $31,222 |
| ME | $36,350 | $30,190 | $31,092 |
| WA | $39,120 | $33,613 | $30,962 |
| SD | $30,950 | $27,048 | $30,704 |
| CO | $36,900 | $30,914 | $30,493 |
| NV | $33,840 | $29,370 | $30,285 |
| ND | $30,220 | $26,462 | $29,876 |
| RI | $35,230 | $29,586 | $29,174 |
| MN | $34,120 | $28,589 | $29,048 |
| IL | $34,960 | $28,685 | $29,017 |
| AK | $33,960 | $29,467 | $28,970 |
| NM | $30,190 | $26,080 | $28,854 |
| ID | $31,070 | $26,351 | $28,823 |
| NE | $30,430 | $25,916 | $28,676 |
| MA | $37,870 | $31,035 | $28,673 |
| OR | $37,880 | $29,852 | $28,506 |
| CT | $34,980 | $29,412 | $28,366 |
| MO | $29,890 | $25,729 | $28,039 |
| WY | $28,950 | $25,441 | $28,004 |
| IA | $28,510 | $24,616 | $27,731 |
| AZ | $32,660 | $28,008 | $27,702 |
| UT | $31,800 | $26,316 | $27,701 |
| AR | $27,710 | $23,859 | $27,580 |
| NY | $35,770 | $29,587 | $27,490 |
| IN | $29,870 | $25,329 | $27,476 |
| TN | $28,330 | $24,940 | $26,958 |
| OK | $27,720 | $23,691 | $26,834 |
| DE | $31,840 | $26,563 | $26,763 |
| WI | $28,920 | $24,845 | $26,687 |
| MD | $33,320 | $27,734 | $26,676 |
| KS | $28,640 | $23,883 | $26,547 |
| MI | $29,460 | $24,850 | $26,384 |
| AL | $27,870 | $23,411 | $26,021 |
| OH | $26,870 | $23,715 | $25,830 |
| SC | $27,420 | $23,943 | $25,696 |
| MT | $26,770 | $23,154 | $25,657 |
| TX | $28,280 | $24,899 | $25,622 |
| NJ | $32,220 | $27,592 | $25,341 |
| FL | $29,900 | $26,205 | $25,330 |
| VA | $29,950 | $25,283 | $25,095 |
| PA | $28,810 | $24,444 | $25,071 |
| NC | $27,190 | $23,425 | $24,883 |
| LA | $24,960 | $21,802 | $24,678 |
| GA | $26,940 | $23,050 | $23,836 |
| WV | $23,120 | $20,126 | $22,419 |
| KY | $23,500 | $20,257 | $22,392 |
| MS | $22,670 | $19,464 | $22,298 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of cooks, fast food earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $30,890.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for cooks, fast food. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Hawaii keeps the most at $38,613.
- Levelling out prices for cooks, fast food 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 — Mississippi sits at the bottom on $22,298.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for cooks, fast food, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $30,890, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for cooks, fast food is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Hawaii retains the most, $38,613. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to cooks, fast food 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 Mississippi at $22,298. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $22,298 — and the two source series are dated independently.