Food Servers, Nonrestaurant
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metropolitan area. Estimated employment 12,200.
Where you sit in the distribution
That is the median — half of people in this occupation in Chicago earn more.
$35,670 in Chicago buys what $34,400 buys across the country as a whole.
Chicago's regional price parity is 103.6 — above the national average, so the nominal figure overstates what it buys. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.
The same job, elsewhere in Illinois
Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.
| Metro area | Median | Adjusted | RPP | vs. Chicago |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago This page | $35,670 | $34,400 | 103.6 | — |
| Springfield | $34,800 | $37,500 | 92.7 | +9.0% |
| Champaign | $34,580 | $37,300 | 92.7 | +8.3% |
| Decatur | $33,710 | $38,100 | 88.4 | +10.7% |
| Peoria | $33,700 | $36,900 | 91.2 | +7.3% |
| Bloomington | $33,540 | $35,900 | 93.5 | +4.1% |
| Kankakee | $32,430 | $33,600 | 96.4 | −2.3% |
| Rockford | $31,670 | $34,400 | 92.2 | −0.2% |
Price parity and difference against Chicago 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 19.9% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it is roughly flat — people in this occupation in Chicago 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
- 12,200 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
- Occupation
- SOC 35-3041, Food Servers, Nonrestaurant. Mapped to our taxonomy as food-servers-nonrestaurant.
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.