Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations

Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations is one of the 23 SOC major groups — the top level of the U.S. Standard Occupational Classification, the official scheme every detailed occupation rolls up to. It contains 18 occupations employing about 17,394,430 people, with a median wage of $34,340 across its occupations. BLS projects employment in this family to change +4.1% between 2024 and 2034 , with roughly 3,530,000 openings a year.

Occupation groups in this family

This family divides into 4 SOC minor groups — tighter clusters of related occupations. Ranked by U.S. employment.

• Food and Beverage Serving Workers · 5 occupations · $33,530
• Cooks and Food Preparation Workers · 7 occupations · $36,210
• Other Food Preparation and Serving Related Workers · 4 occupations · $33,170
• Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers · 2 occupations · $51,500

Occupations in this family

Ranked by U.S. employment (BLS OEWS May 2024). Projected change is BLS 2024–34; AI exposure is the OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" human beta rating (share of an occupation's tasks where an LLM with tools could cut the time to do them by at least half).

AI exposure across this family

Two published studies estimate how exposed each occupation is to AI. The OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" study rates the share of an occupation's tasks an LLM (with tools) could speed up by half or more; averaged across this family it is 14% — 30th percentile of the 23 families. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages -0.80 here.

Exposure measures where AI could assist tasks — it is not a prediction that these jobs will be automated. High exposure often means augmentation (faster work), and many high-exposure occupations are also projected to grow.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic
• AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-food-preparation-and-serving-related-occupations,
  title  = {Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/job-families/food-preparation-and-serving-related-occupations}
}