Which Food Industry Pays The Highest Chef Wages?

Before starting your culinary career as a chef, you might want to know which food industry offers the highest wages so that you can get a fair share of your hard work. With that being said, knowing certain food industry pays the highest earnings is important so that you know which sector of the culinary industry you want to get into. Moreover, finding out the average earnings of the food industry will also give you a rough idea of where you stand in terms of wages and salary. If you think you have been underpaid for the work you do, you could take this data to negotiate for a better compensations.

The following table shows the wages estimation of the whole food preparation and serving related occupations. This is basically the wages estimation of all the people employed in the whole food industry. The source of the data comes from the United States Department of Labor (http://www.bls.gov/) and the survey was done in May 2007.

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Based on the table above, apparently chefs and head cooks are the one that make the most money in the food industry in 2007 with an average annual wages of $40,700. The Department of Labor defines chefs and head cooks as the one who direct the preparation, seasoning, and cooking of salads, soups, fish, meats, vegetables, desserts, or other foods. They may plan and price menu items, order supplies, and keep records and accounts.

They may or may not participate in cooking. This category of chefs and head cooks total 100,130 in terms of number of people employed in the food industry as chefs and head cooks. The number does not include self-employed workers. The chef and head cooks median hourly of $17.87 means that 50% of the people earn an hourly wages below $17.87 and the other 50% earn above the hourly wages of $17.87.

The second highest average annual wages goes to first-line supervisor and managers of the food industry with a mean annual wages of $29,930 in May 2007. First-line supervisor and managers are those who supervise workers to engage in preparing and serving food. The number of people employed in this sector is 788,750.

The third highest average annual wages goes to private household cooks with an average annual wages of $28,260 in May 2007. Private household cooks are the one who prepares meals in private home. According to the table, the number of people employed as private household cooks is only 990 across the whole nation.

This is the fewest number of people employed in the culinary industry. The total number of employment of the whole food preparation and serving relation occupations is 11 millions and private household cooks make up less than 1% of it. That might mean there is not much demand for private household cooks.

Another thing worth mentioned is the combined food preparation and serving workers (including fast food) which makes up 2.6 million employments across the nation and it is the largest number of employment in the food industry. But the average annual wages for these people are the lowest with only $16,700 in May 2007. The second largest of employment in the food industry is waiters and waitresses totaling 2.3 million employments.

In conclusion, chef and head cooks are undoubtedly the one that make the most money in the culinary industry. This is the occupation that you want to get yourself in. Set your goals early in your chef career and achieve it accordingly.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 10:06 pm and is filed under chef wages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.