Cooks, Restaurant
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays cooks, restaurant the most, $46,800. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Vermont wins, at $38,688. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For cooks, restaurant, Washington leads both nominally at $46,800 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Vermont first at $38,688. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$37,390
People doing it
1,409,890
Highest paid
$46,800
WA
Best off, really
$38,688
VT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$28,700
Highest tenth
$47,900
Lowest, really
$28,117
WV
States with data
51
National average
$38,730
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.64%
VT, 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 $28,117 and $38,688. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Set the geography aside for a moment. The striking thing about this job is how many people do it: 1,409,890. When the numbers on this page move, they move for a great many households at once.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $37,390. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for cooks, restaurant cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $28,117 to $38,688. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in cooks, restaurant is 1,409,890, placing it among the largest occupations by headcount. Policy changes touching this occupation's effective tax or its regional wage structure therefore have unusually broad incidence.
- Coverage for cooks, restaurant is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Cooks, Restaurant
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $28,700 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $37,390 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,900 |
| This salary | $37,390 |
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, Restaurant
The national median for this job
$37,390around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $28,700 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $37,390 |
| Top tenth | $47,900 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cooks, Restaurant, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $29,050 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $46,800 |
| Spread | $17,750 |
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 | $34,760 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $35,771 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VT | $45,390 | $37,387 | $38,688 |
| ME | $45,290 | $36,833 | $37,935 |
| WA | $46,800 | $39,784 | $36,646 |
| ND | $36,470 | $31,484 | $35,546 |
| SD | $36,220 | $31,283 | $35,510 |
| MT | $38,060 | $31,729 | $35,159 |
| WY | $36,830 | $31,773 | $34,974 |
| NE | $37,030 | $30,952 | $34,248 |
| NV | $38,610 | $33,203 | $34,237 |
| MA | $45,600 | $36,860 | $34,054 |
| CO | $41,600 | $34,484 | $34,014 |
| TN | $36,420 | $31,443 | $33,987 |
| DC | $46,130 | $37,644 | $33,973 |
| IA | $35,670 | $30,097 | $33,906 |
| AK | $40,140 | $34,432 | $33,852 |
| MO | $36,940 | $31,062 | $33,851 |
| HI | $45,420 | $36,638 | $33,734 |
| ID | $36,440 | $30,382 | $33,231 |
| OH | $35,540 | $30,475 | $33,193 |
| CA | $44,880 | $37,310 | $33,141 |
| NY | $43,680 | $35,515 | $32,999 |
| NM | $35,020 | $29,780 | $32,948 |
| WI | $36,550 | $30,599 | $32,868 |
| NH | $40,200 | $34,481 | $32,731 |
| SC | $35,740 | $30,484 | $32,717 |
| MI | $36,980 | $30,573 | $32,460 |
| MN | $38,590 | $31,941 | $32,455 |
| AZ | $38,670 | $32,687 | $32,330 |
| OR | $43,100 | $33,590 | $32,076 |
| KY | $34,640 | $28,918 | $31,965 |
| KS | $35,130 | $28,735 | $31,940 |
| IN | $35,170 | $29,431 | $31,926 |
| NC | $35,400 | $29,720 | $31,571 |
| UT | $36,490 | $29,876 | $31,448 |
| CT | $39,480 | $32,601 | $31,441 |
| DE | $37,840 | $31,051 | $31,285 |
| PA | $36,580 | $30,449 | $31,230 |
| IL | $37,580 | $30,660 | $31,015 |
| TX | $34,760 | $30,110 | $30,985 |
| GA | $35,940 | $29,863 | $30,883 |
| FL | $37,020 | $31,926 | $30,860 |
| OK | $31,720 | $26,740 | $30,288 |
| RI | $36,510 | $30,567 | $30,141 |
| VA | $36,750 | $30,356 | $30,130 |
| MD | $37,820 | $31,136 | $29,948 |
| NJ | $38,460 | $32,454 | $29,806 |
| AR | $30,180 | $25,772 | $29,791 |
| AL | $32,180 | $26,685 | $29,660 |
| MS | $29,560 | $24,841 | $28,457 |
| LA | $29,050 | $25,036 | $28,339 |
| WV | $29,590 | $25,241 | $28,117 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of cooks, restaurant 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 $37,390.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for cooks, restaurant. 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, Washington keeps the most at $39,784.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for cooks, restaurant. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits West Virginia, on $28,117.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for cooks, restaurant, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $37,390, 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, restaurant 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 Washington retains the most, $39,784. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for cooks, restaurant rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; West Virginia anchors the distribution at $28,117. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.