2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Food Preparation Workers

Napa, CA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 620.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 35-2021
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$42,810 · 50th
$36,45010th
$38,03025th
$42,81050th
$46,70075th
$55,65090th

That is the medianhalf of food preparation workers in Napa earn more.

Table 1 — Adjusted

$42,810 in Napa buys what $38,000 buys across the country as a whole.

Napa's regional price parity is 112.6 — well above the national average — a dollar here buys noticeably less than in the US as a whole. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.

Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in California

Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. Napa
San Jose$45,580$41,300110.4+8.5%
Napa This page$42,810$38,000112.6
Santa Rosa$42,640$39,600107.8+4.0%
San Francisco$41,000$35,500115.6−6.8%
Los Angeles$39,770$35,000113.6−7.9%
Santa Cruz$39,110$35,600109.9−6.4%
Merced$38,980$39,70098.3+4.3%
Vallejo$38,840$35,800108.5−5.9%

Price parity and difference against Napa are in the full table on wider screens.

Fig. 2 — Five-year trend

Nominal against real

The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.

35k40k45k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 18.3% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it is roughly flat — food preparation workers in Napa earn about what they earned in 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.

Sources

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
620 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 35-2021, Food Preparation Workers. Mapped to our taxonomy as food-preparation-workers.

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.