Culinary education can lead to kitchen work, management, teaching, sales, and other food-related careers. U.S. data for 2023–2025 shows how people with personal and culinary services degrees are distributed across occupations, while 2025 labor-market profiles outline wages and projected demand for chefs, cooks, and food service managers.
Contents
- Personal and culinary services degree profile
- Where culinary degree holders work
- Training routes and entry requirements
- Chef and head-cook labor-market outcomes
- The cook workforce and specialization
- Food-service management advancement outlook
Personal and culinary services degree profile
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) field-of-degree profile is the broadest education measure in this dataset. The American Community Survey counted 61,340 employed people with a personal and culinary services degree in 2023. This category includes cosmetology services and culinary arts, so it should not be read as a narrow count of culinary-school graduates. The BLS reports the category as 100% of the personal and culinary services major grouping, and notes that it is different from a narrower NCES CIP 12.0500 program count. (BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
The median wage for people in this degree category was $45,000 in 2023. Fourteen percent worked part time. The degree profile also shows that 24% worked in occupations requiring at least a bachelor’s degree, while 11% held an advanced degree. Those figures describe degree holders as a broad working population rather than as a group limited to restaurant kitchens. (BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
These measurements are useful for understanding the limits of culinary education statistics. A culinary-related degree may sit alongside experience, later management responsibility, education work, or a job outside food preparation. The degree category therefore provides context about people’s education and earnings, but it does not identify every person who received culinary training through a certificate, apprenticeship, employer program, or informal route.
Where culinary degree holders work
Food preparation and serving occupations employed 25% of people with a personal and culinary services degree in 2023. Management occupations employed 15%, followed by personal care and service occupations at 9%, educational instruction and library occupations at 8%, and sales and related occupations at 7%. Together, these reported shares show several directions for a culinary-related education.
| Occupation group | Share of degree holders, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Food preparation and serving | 25% |
| Management | 15% |
| Personal care and service | 9% |
| Educational instruction and library | 8% |
| Sales and related | 7% |
(BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
Among specific occupations, chefs and head cooks accounted for 16% of degree holders in that occupation who held a personal and culinary services degree. Restaurant cooks accounted for 5%, and food service managers accounted for 4%. These are occupation-specific degree-holder shares, not the percentage of all culinary graduates who entered each job. That distinction matters when comparing an education path with a career destination. (BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
The pattern also suggests why culinary education may be relevant beyond one station or one restaurant. A person can apply food knowledge in preparation, move into supervision, teach, or work in a related service or sales role. The available degree data records where people worked in 2023; it does not establish that the degree alone caused a particular occupation or wage.
Training routes and entry requirements
The BLS occupation profiles describe experience requirements alongside education and employment outcomes. For chefs and head cooks, five years or more of related work experience was the typical entry requirement in the 2025 profile. In the 2023 degree-holder data, 3% of chefs and head cooks had an advanced degree. The combination points to a career route in which accumulated kitchen experience is a central qualification, even though formal education can be part of a person’s preparation.
Food service managers had a different experience profile. They typically needed less than five years of related work experience in the 2025 profile, and 4% had an advanced degree in the 2023 degree-holder data. These figures do not specify one universal education requirement; they describe the typical experience level and the share with advanced degrees in the cited profiles. (BLS, “Chefs and Head Cooks”; BLS, “Food Service Managers”)
Restaurant cooks had a projected employment growth rate of 15% for 2024–34 in the personal-and-culinary-services field profile. Food service managers had a projected growth rate of 6% over the same period. These projections use a different period from the occupation-profile projections covering 2025–35, so they should be kept separate rather than combined. (BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
Chef and head-cook labor-market outcomes
The BLS reported 220,300 chef and head-cook jobs in 2025. The median annual wage was $62,470 in May 2025, equivalent to a median hourly wage of $30.03. Pay varied substantially across the distribution: the lowest 10% earned less than $38,970 annually, while the highest 10% earned more than $98,370 annually. These are U.S. occupation measurements for May 2025, not guaranteed outcomes for a culinary graduate.
| Chef and head-cook measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Jobs, 2025 | 220,300 |
| Median annual wage, May 2025 | $62,470 |
| Median hourly wage, May 2025 | $30.03 |
| Lowest 10% annual wage, May 2025 | Less than $38,970 |
| Highest 10% annual wage, May 2025 | More than $98,370 |
Employment of chefs and head cooks was projected to grow 7% from 2025 to 2035, with a projected employment change of 14,400 jobs. The BLS projected about 25,200 openings per year on average during that period. Openings are a forecast of annual opportunities and should not be interpreted as all-new jobs created by growth.
Food services and drinking places employed 63% of chefs and head cooks in 2025. Traveler accommodation employed 9%, amusement, gambling, and recreation employed 6%, healthcare and social assistance employed 5%, and self-employed workers represented 6%. The industry mix shows that chef work exists in restaurants as well as lodging, recreation, healthcare, and independent work. (BLS, “Chefs and Head Cooks”)
The cook workforce and specialization
The cook workforce was much larger than the chef and head-cook occupation, with 2,705,800 jobs in 2025. Restaurant cooks held 1,417,500 jobs, fast-food cooks held 640,500, and institution and cafeteria cooks held 454,000. These categories represent distinct parts of the cook workforce and help show how culinary work is distributed by setting.
Food services and drinking places employed 76% of cooks in 2025. Healthcare and social assistance employed 7%, and educational services employed 5%. The settings outside restaurants include institutional, care-related, and school food operations, where the daily work can be shaped by the needs of the organization and the people it serves. (BLS, “Cooks”)
The median hourly wage for cooks was $17.62 in May 2025. The lowest 10% earned less than $12.85 per hour, while the highest 10% earned more than $22.84 per hour. Pay also differed by specialization: private-household cooks had a median hourly wage of $23.05, institution and cafeteria cooks had $18.01, and restaurant cooks had $17.98. (BLS, “Cooks”)
Employment of cooks was projected to grow 7% from 2025 to 2035. The BLS projected about 393,200 openings for cooks each year on average during that period. This forecast covers the cook occupation broadly, not just restaurant cooks or graduates of culinary programs. (BLS, “Cooks”)
Food-service management advancement outlook
Food service management is one possible advancement direction for people who build kitchen and operational experience. Food service managers held 344,300 jobs in 2025. Their median annual wage was $69,390 in May 2025, and their median hourly wage was $33.36. The annual and hourly figures are both BLS measures for the same May 2025 wage period.
Employment of food service managers was projected to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, with about 38,800 openings per year on average. Compared with the chef and head-cook profile, this is a separate occupation with its own experience expectations and forecast. The 2025 profile reported less than five years of related work experience as the typical entry requirement, while the 2023 degree-holder data reported that 4% of food service managers had an advanced degree. (BLS, “Food Service Managers”; BLS, “Field of degree: Personal and culinary services”)
Taken together, these figures place culinary education within a wider progression of roles. The available U.S. statistics include broad degree outcomes, cook specialties, chef and head-cook careers, and food-service management. They also show why measurement periods and definitions matter: the personal-and-culinary-services degree category includes cosmetology services and culinary arts, occupation profiles cover the U.S. workforce, and the 2025–35 numbers are projections rather than completed employment counts.