Waiters and Waitresses
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for waiters and waitresses is Hawaii, at $62,390. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Vermont comes out ahead, worth $49,574. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for waiters and waitresses: Hawaii leads at $62,390 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Vermont to $49,574 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
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
$35,230
People doing it
2,270,910
Highest paid
$62,390
HI
Best off, really
$49,574
VT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$18,100
Highest tenth
$64,720
Lowest, really
$15,689
LA
States with data
51
National average
$40,060
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.64%
VT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $15,689 to $49,574.
- Set the geography aside for a moment. The striking thing about this job is how many people do it: 2,270,910. When the numbers on this page move, they move for a great many households at once.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $35,230 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in waiters and waitresses is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $15,689 to $49,574 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- National employment in waiters and waitresses is 2,270,910, 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report waiters and waitresses, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Waiters and Waitresses
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $18,100 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,230 |
| Top tenth earn over | $64,720 |
| This salary | $35,230 |
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 Waiters and Waitresses
The national median for this job
$35,230around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $18,100 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,230 |
| Top tenth | $64,720 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Waiters and Waitresses, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $15,080 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $62,390 |
| Spread | $47,310 |
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 | $23,240 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $23,916 |
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 | $59,140 | $47,906 | $49,574 |
| HI | $62,390 | $49,012 | $45,127 |
| WA | $56,130 | $47,280 | $43,552 |
| ME | $43,370 | $35,420 | $36,479 |
| CO | $44,860 | $36,960 | $36,456 |
| AZ | $43,950 | $36,798 | $36,395 |
| VA | $44,760 | $36,332 | $36,061 |
| OR | $48,410 | $37,392 | $35,706 |
| NY | $47,020 | $38,018 | $35,325 |
| DC | $47,850 | $38,922 | $35,127 |
| NM | $36,920 | $31,225 | $34,546 |
| NJ | $44,960 | $37,369 | $34,320 |
| OH | $36,700 | $31,376 | $34,174 |
| WV | $35,380 | $29,711 | $33,096 |
| MI | $37,760 | $31,166 | $33,091 |
| KS | $36,120 | $29,475 | $32,763 |
| NE | $33,770 | $28,481 | $31,514 |
| NH | $38,430 | $33,059 | $31,381 |
| DE | $36,880 | $30,333 | $30,561 |
| ND | $30,890 | $27,000 | $30,484 |
| CT | $37,770 | $31,394 | $30,277 |
| FL | $36,150 | $31,227 | $30,185 |
| PA | $34,690 | $28,988 | $29,732 |
| RI | $35,420 | $29,732 | $29,318 |
| MD | $36,750 | $30,327 | $29,170 |
| MA | $38,460 | $31,480 | $29,084 |
| NC | $32,150 | $27,238 | $28,934 |
| SD | $28,990 | $25,473 | $28,916 |
| ID | $30,050 | $25,586 | $27,986 |
| KY | $29,660 | $25,091 | $27,735 |
| MO | $29,400 | $25,358 | $27,635 |
| WI | $29,670 | $25,410 | $27,294 |
| UT | $31,150 | $25,823 | $27,181 |
| CA | $36,080 | $30,591 | $27,173 |
| TN | $27,760 | $24,470 | $26,450 |
| IN | $28,480 | $24,253 | $26,309 |
| IL | $31,200 | $25,850 | $26,149 |
| AL | $26,840 | $22,612 | $25,133 |
| AR | $24,680 | $21,467 | $24,815 |
| NV | $26,410 | $23,359 | $24,086 |
| WY | $23,920 | $21,308 | $23,455 |
| AK | $26,310 | $23,276 | $22,884 |
| MT | $23,370 | $20,514 | $22,731 |
| MN | $25,470 | $22,040 | $22,395 |
| TX | $23,240 | $20,748 | $21,351 |
| MS | $21,370 | $18,445 | $21,131 |
| IA | $21,000 | $18,717 | $21,086 |
| OK | $17,910 | $16,053 | $18,183 |
| SC | $18,370 | $16,671 | $17,891 |
| GA | $18,700 | $16,675 | $17,244 |
| LA | $15,080 | $13,860 | $15,689 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for waiters and waitresses, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $35,230 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 waiters and waitresses, 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 $49,012.
- Levelling out prices for waiters and waitresses 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 $15,689.
- All wage figures for waiters and waitresses are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $35,230. 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 waiters and waitresses 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 $49,012, which leads in Hawaii.
- The price deflation applied to waiters and waitresses 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 $15,689. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Louisiana anchors the bottom at $15,689 — and the two source series are dated independently.