Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Hawaii pays this job best, at $47,070. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $34,845 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop is also the real leader: Hawaii at $47,070, holding through tax and through price deflation to $34,845. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
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
$31,200
People doing it
432,690
Highest paid
$47,070
HI
Best off, really
$34,845
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$22,340
Highest tenth
$43,990
Lowest, really
$21,687
MS
States with data
51
National average
$32,690
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 $21,687 up to $34,845.
- About 432,690 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $31,200. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $31,200 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $21,687 to $34,845, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 432,690 workers, hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $22,340 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $31,200 |
| Top tenth earn over | $43,990 |
| This salary | $31,200 |
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 Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop
The national median for this job
$31,200around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $22,340 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $31,200 |
| Top tenth | $43,990 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $21,990 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $47,070 |
| Spread | $25,080 |
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 | $27,080 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $27,867 |
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 | $47,070 | $37,845 | $34,845 |
| ME | $36,800 | $30,525 | $31,438 |
| OR | $40,720 | $31,886 | $30,448 |
| SD | $30,310 | $26,534 | $30,120 |
| CO | $36,340 | $30,489 | $30,073 |
| WA | $37,270 | $32,126 | $29,593 |
| AZ | $34,740 | $29,628 | $29,304 |
| ND | $28,660 | $25,208 | $28,461 |
| DC | $37,570 | $31,279 | $28,229 |
| NV | $31,170 | $27,225 | $28,073 |
| NY | $36,490 | $30,126 | $27,992 |
| NH | $33,920 | $29,435 | $27,941 |
| CT | $34,210 | $28,828 | $27,803 |
| MD | $34,860 | $28,898 | $27,796 |
| CA | $36,640 | $31,019 | $27,553 |
| MT | $28,910 | $24,807 | $27,489 |
| IA | $28,210 | $24,381 | $27,466 |
| MO | $29,130 | $25,154 | $27,412 |
| NM | $28,480 | $24,761 | $27,394 |
| VT | $31,080 | $26,368 | $27,286 |
| NE | $28,450 | $24,394 | $26,992 |
| AR | $26,760 | $23,109 | $26,713 |
| NJ | $34,050 | $29,031 | $26,662 |
| MA | $34,960 | $28,842 | $26,647 |
| OH | $27,550 | $24,256 | $26,419 |
| RI | $31,400 | $26,652 | $26,281 |
| DE | $31,200 | $26,084 | $26,281 |
| TN | $27,490 | $24,248 | $26,210 |
| IL | $31,200 | $25,850 | $26,149 |
| KS | $28,110 | $23,479 | $26,097 |
| MN | $30,200 | $25,649 | $26,061 |
| AK | $30,210 | $26,454 | $26,008 |
| WI | $28,060 | $24,187 | $25,981 |
| MI | $28,950 | $24,462 | $25,972 |
| UT | $29,610 | $24,654 | $25,951 |
| NC | $28,320 | $24,310 | $25,824 |
| ID | $27,280 | $23,483 | $25,685 |
| KY | $27,100 | $23,096 | $25,529 |
| VA | $30,490 | $25,686 | $25,495 |
| PA | $29,170 | $24,723 | $25,356 |
| SC | $27,000 | $23,606 | $25,334 |
| FL | $29,810 | $26,132 | $25,260 |
| IN | $26,920 | $23,014 | $24,965 |
| TX | $27,080 | $23,910 | $24,605 |
| GA | $27,850 | $23,754 | $24,564 |
| AL | $26,130 | $22,060 | $24,520 |
| OK | $24,740 | $21,371 | $24,206 |
| WV | $24,420 | $21,160 | $23,571 |
| WY | $22,660 | $20,271 | $22,313 |
| LA | $22,060 | $19,501 | $22,074 |
| MS | $21,990 | $18,931 | $21,687 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $31,200 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, 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 Hawaii, at $37,845.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Mississippi, on $21,687.
- All wage figures for hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $31,200. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop 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 $37,845, which leads in Hawaii.
- Real-terms results for hosts and hostesses, restaurant, lounge, and coffee shop 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; Mississippi anchors the distribution at $21,687. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.