Food Preparation Workers
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV metropolitan area. Estimated employment 14,810.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of food preparation workers in Washington earn more.
$37,630 in Washington buys what $34,600 buys across the country as a whole.
Washington's regional price parity is 108.9 — 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.
Nominal against real
The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.
Published pay rose 22.5% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it still rose 3.1% — pay has outrun prices since 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
- 14,810 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.