Open Veils · Answer
What is the average rate / hour for a waiter?
The official BLS median of $16.94/hour masks a staggering range — from $8.70 at the 10th percentile to $31.12+ at the 90th. Geography and tipping law distort the number dramatically. Sixteen states still permit a $2.13/hour cash wage, legally offloading compensation onto customers. The 'average' figure is pulled upward by a small tier of high-volume, fine-dining servers.
Evidence
- Per BLS May 2025 data (published May 2026 and reported by Tip'd, October 2026), the national average for servers including tips is $19.26/hour, while the median sits at $16.94.
- The 10th-to-90th percentile spread — $8.70 to $31.12 — is, as Brief First noted in August 2026, unusually wide even by hourly-labor standards.
- Catherine Austin Fitts has broadly documented how wage-floor policy in service industries functions as a subsidy transfer — keeping labor costs off corporate balance sheets and onto tipped workers and consumers.
- The gap between those two figures is the signal: a relatively thin stratum of servers at expensive, high-turnover restaurants drags the average up significantly.
- Hawaii leads at $32.82/hour average; Louisiana sits at the bottom at $10.75.
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