Cooks, Fast Food
Kansas City, MO-KS metropolitan area. Estimated employment 13,850.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of people in this occupation in Kansas City earn more.
$30,170 in Kansas City buys what $32,600 buys across the country as a whole.
Kansas City's regional price parity is 92.5 — well below the national average — the nominal figure understates local buying power considerably. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.
The same job, elsewhere in Missouri
Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.
| Metro area | Median | Adjusted | RPP | vs. Kansas City |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis | $30,860 | $32,500 | 95.1 | −0.5% |
| Kansas City This page | $30,170 | $32,600 | 92.5 | — |
| St. Joseph | $29,620 | $34,300 | 86.4 | +5.2% |
| Springfield | $29,190 | $33,000 | 88.6 | +1.1% |
| Columbia | $29,110 | $32,500 | 89.4 | −0.2% |
| Cape Girardeau | $28,820 | $33,500 | 86.1 | +2.7% |
| Jefferson City | $28,600 | $32,500 | 88.0 | −0.3% |
| Joplin | $28,600 | $33,400 | 85.7 | +2.3% |
Price parity and difference against Kansas City are in the full table on wider screens.
Nominal against real
The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.
Published pay rose 18.6% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it is roughly flat — people in this occupation in Kansas City earn about what they earned in 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.
How this page was made
- Wage data
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
- Price parity
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
- Inflation
- Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
- Employment
- 13,850 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
- Occupation
- SOC 35-2011, Cooks, Fast Food. Mapped to our taxonomy as cooks-fast-food.
Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.