Cooks and Food Preparation Workers

Cooks and Food Preparation Workers is one of the 98 SOC minor groups — the middle tier of the U.S. Standard Occupational Classification, sitting between the broad job families and individual occupations. It belongs to the Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations family and contains 7 detailed occupations employing about 3,632,300 people, with a median wage of $36,210 across them. BLS projects employment in this group to change +2.7% between 2024 and 2034 , with roughly 580,100 openings a year.

Occupations in this group

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 group

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 group it is 9% — 13th percentile of the 98 groups. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages -0.78 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-cooks-and-food-preparation-workers,
  title  = {Cooks and Food Preparation Workers},
  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/occupation-groups/cooks-and-food-preparation-workers}
}