Food Service Managers
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays food service managers the most, at $95,190. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $69,818 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Washington leads for food service managers at $95,190 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $69,818 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
$69,390
People doing it
238,430
Highest paid
$95,190
WA
Best off, really
$69,818
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$45,960
Highest tenth
$107,640
Lowest, really
$45,073
OR
States with data
51
National average
$74,880
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $45,073 and $69,818. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 238,430 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $69,390. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $69,390 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for food service managers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $45,073 to $69,818. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in food service managers is 238,430 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report food service managers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Food Service Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $45,960 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $69,390 |
| Top tenth earn over | $107,640 |
| This salary | $69,390 |
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 Food Service Managers
The national median for this job
$69,390around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $45,960 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $69,390 |
| Top tenth | $107,640 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Food Service Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $54,800 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $95,190 |
| Spread | $40,390 |
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 | $60,770 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $62,537 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $95,190 | $75,796 | $69,818 |
| ND | $72,210 | $59,481 | $67,155 |
| AK | $82,030 | $66,538 | $65,416 |
| MA | $92,240 | $69,429 | $64,145 |
| RI | $82,850 | $64,428 | $63,531 |
| MT | $72,140 | $56,865 | $63,013 |
| VT | $77,910 | $60,608 | $62,718 |
| NC | $74,080 | $58,498 | $62,140 |
| MN | $79,820 | $61,079 | $62,061 |
| KY | $70,410 | $56,017 | $61,919 |
| IN | $71,430 | $57,003 | $61,836 |
| CO | $79,870 | $62,213 | $61,365 |
| KS | $70,320 | $54,665 | $60,762 |
| IA | $66,700 | $53,831 | $60,643 |
| ID | $70,140 | $55,309 | $60,497 |
| HI | $87,800 | $65,368 | $60,186 |
| NH | $77,360 | $63,253 | $60,043 |
| NY | $84,200 | $64,115 | $59,572 |
| TN | $64,410 | $53,933 | $58,297 |
| NM | $65,210 | $52,677 | $58,280 |
| FL | $72,790 | $60,038 | $58,034 |
| CT | $77,990 | $60,157 | $58,016 |
| DE | $74,430 | $57,510 | $57,943 |
| OK | $63,840 | $51,103 | $57,884 |
| SD | $60,640 | $50,904 | $57,783 |
| WY | $62,610 | $52,487 | $57,775 |
| UT | $69,480 | $54,617 | $57,491 |
| MO | $65,520 | $52,683 | $57,413 |
| SC | $66,190 | $53,291 | $57,193 |
| LA | $61,400 | $50,059 | $56,663 |
| ME | $70,510 | $54,994 | $56,639 |
| OH | $62,980 | $51,769 | $56,386 |
| NV | $65,320 | $54,665 | $56,367 |
| DC | $81,680 | $62,318 | $56,241 |
| AZ | $70,180 | $56,850 | $56,228 |
| NJ | $78,020 | $60,937 | $55,966 |
| AL | $63,010 | $50,092 | $55,676 |
| VA | $71,230 | $55,605 | $55,192 |
| MD | $72,850 | $56,983 | $54,810 |
| MS | $59,540 | $47,731 | $54,679 |
| CA | $78,260 | $60,698 | $53,915 |
| NE | $60,450 | $48,705 | $53,891 |
| GA | $65,280 | $51,974 | $53,748 |
| PA | $64,750 | $52,219 | $53,558 |
| WI | $61,810 | $49,630 | $53,310 |
| TX | $60,770 | $51,009 | $52,492 |
| AR | $55,120 | $44,888 | $51,889 |
| MI | $60,790 | $48,692 | $51,699 |
| IL | $63,930 | $50,528 | $51,113 |
| WV | $54,800 | $44,565 | $49,643 |
| OR | $62,110 | $47,201 | $45,073 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for food service managers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $69,390, 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 food service managers, 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 Washington, at $75,796.
- The price adjustment for food service managers uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Oregon anchors the bottom at $45,073. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for food service managers, with a national value of $69,390. 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 food service managers 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 $75,796, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for food service managers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.