Food Preparation Workers
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays food preparation workers the most, $40,910. 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 North Dakota wins, at $35,845. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For food preparation workers, Washington leads both nominally at $40,910 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 North Dakota first at $35,845. 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
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$35,320
People doing it
893,600
Highest paid
$40,910
WA
Best off, really
$35,845
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$25,810
Highest tenth
$45,340
Lowest, really
$23,475
LA
States with data
51
National average
$35,290
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $23,475 to $35,845. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 893,600 people hold this job nationally, earning $35,320 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $35,320. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in food preparation workers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $23,475 through $35,845. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 893,600 are employed nationally in food preparation workers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for food preparation workers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Food Preparation Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $25,810 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,320 |
| Top tenth earn over | $45,340 |
| This salary | $35,320 |
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 Food Preparation Workers
The national median for this job
$35,320around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $25,810 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,320 |
| Top tenth | $45,340 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Food Preparation Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $23,620 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $40,910 |
| Spread | $17,290 |
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 | $30,650 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $31,541 |
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 | $36,800 | $31,749 | $35,845 |
| WY | $36,110 | $31,194 | $34,337 |
| NE | $35,210 | $29,573 | $32,722 |
| OH | $34,530 | $29,692 | $32,340 |
| WA | $40,910 | $35,051 | $32,287 |
| CO | $38,960 | $32,479 | $32,036 |
| VT | $36,550 | $30,580 | $31,645 |
| MT | $33,860 | $28,552 | $31,638 |
| NM | $33,370 | $28,525 | $31,559 |
| WI | $34,070 | $28,729 | $30,859 |
| AZ | $36,750 | $31,192 | $30,851 |
| ME | $36,030 | $29,951 | $30,846 |
| AK | $35,720 | $30,881 | $30,360 |
| GA | $35,250 | $29,343 | $30,345 |
| SD | $30,430 | $26,631 | $30,229 |
| NH | $36,780 | $31,733 | $30,123 |
| FL | $35,920 | $31,042 | $30,006 |
| NV | $33,460 | $29,065 | $29,970 |
| DE | $35,930 | $29,623 | $29,845 |
| SC | $32,180 | $27,695 | $29,723 |
| MN | $34,850 | $29,136 | $29,605 |
| DC | $39,600 | $32,789 | $29,592 |
| CT | $36,650 | $30,589 | $29,501 |
| CA | $39,350 | $33,088 | $29,390 |
| MA | $38,900 | $31,811 | $29,390 |
| MO | $31,510 | $26,955 | $29,375 |
| RI | $35,470 | $29,770 | $29,356 |
| IA | $30,360 | $26,032 | $29,327 |
| ID | $31,510 | $26,682 | $29,184 |
| UT | $33,540 | $27,637 | $29,091 |
| IL | $34,850 | $28,602 | $28,933 |
| HI | $38,160 | $31,319 | $28,836 |
| VA | $34,900 | $28,976 | $28,761 |
| MD | $35,500 | $29,382 | $28,261 |
| OR | $37,450 | $29,544 | $28,212 |
| KS | $30,280 | $25,109 | $27,910 |
| MI | $31,180 | $26,159 | $27,774 |
| NJ | $35,540 | $30,202 | $27,738 |
| TX | $30,650 | $26,807 | $27,587 |
| OK | $28,540 | $24,328 | $27,556 |
| AR | $27,660 | $23,820 | $27,535 |
| NC | $30,260 | $25,795 | $27,401 |
| NY | $35,610 | $29,467 | $27,379 |
| IN | $29,700 | $25,197 | $27,334 |
| TN | $28,700 | $25,240 | $27,283 |
| WV | $28,360 | $24,289 | $27,056 |
| PA | $30,840 | $26,013 | $26,680 |
| AL | $27,930 | $23,458 | $26,073 |
| MS | $26,240 | $22,261 | $25,502 |
| KY | $26,850 | $22,899 | $25,312 |
| LA | $23,620 | $20,739 | $23,475 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for food preparation workers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $35,320 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for food preparation workers assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $35,051.
- Levelling out prices for food preparation workers 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 $23,475.
- All wage figures for food preparation workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $35,320. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Take-home calculations for food preparation workers assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $35,051, in Washington. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to food preparation workers 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 $23,475. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Louisiana anchors the bottom at $23,475 — and the two source series are dated independently.