---
title: "Fast Food and Counter Worker"
description: "Perform duties such as taking orders and serving food and beverages. Serve customers at counter or from a steam table. May take payment. May prepare food…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Fast Food and Counter Worker

**Category:** Food Preparation and Serving Related · **SOC code:** 35-3023 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 35-3023.00

Perform duties such as taking orders and serving food and beverages. Serve customers at counter or from a steam table. May take payment. May prepare food and beverages.

Also advertised as: Cafe Server; Cafeteria Server; Cafeteria Worker; Counter Worker; Deli Worker (Delicatessen Worker); Dietary Aide; Food Server; Food Service Worker.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $31,200 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $15.00/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $22,840 to $42,650, with the middle half between $27,700 and $36,070
- **Total US employment:** 3,854,050
- **Typical entry education:** No formal credential
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.1% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 904,300 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 48/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 3,854,050 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $22,840 |
| 25th | $27,700 |
| 50th (median) | $31,200 |
| 75th | $36,070 |
| 90th | $42,650 |
| Mean (average) | $32,150 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $42,280 | $38,186 | 449,840 |
| WA | $37,710 | $35,239 | 94,710 |
| DC | $37,430 | $34,058 | 5,500 |
| CO | $36,270 | $35,196 | 82,010 |
| VT | $36,030 | $36,781 | 6,830 |
| MA | $35,850 | $33,898 | 85,810 |
| CT | $35,380 | $34,147 | 35,720 |
| HI | $35,250 | $32,060 | 24,130 |
| NY | $35,250 | $32,663 | 168,620 |
| OR | $35,050 | $33,910 | 59,920 |
| ME | $34,710 | $35,765 | 17,250 |
| AZ | $34,230 | $34,000 | 77,210 |
| NJ | $34,150 | $31,386 | 93,730 |
| IL | $33,910 | $33,924 | 127,590 |
| MD | $33,660 | $32,070 | 49,380 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 3,796,000 in the 2024–2034 base year to 4,029,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 233,200 jobs, or +6.1%. Faster than average: 6.1% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 904,300 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** No formal educational credential (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 56.3% |
| High School Diploma | 24.0% |
| Some College Courses | 17.2% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 2.6% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 0.1% |

## What the work involves

- Communicate with customers regarding orders, comments, and complaints.
- Brew coffee and tea, and fill containers with requested beverages.
- Serve customers in eating places that specialize in fast service and inexpensive carry-out food.
- Accept payment from customers, and make change as necessary.
- Serve food, beverages, or desserts to customers in such settings as take-out counters of restaurants or lunchrooms, business or industrial establishments, hotel rooms, and cars.
- Clean and organize eating, service, and kitchen areas.
- Perform cleaning duties, such as sweeping, mopping, and washing dishes, to keep equipment and facilities sanitary.
- Scrub and polish counters, steam tables, and other equipment, and clean glasses, dishes, and fountain equipment.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 2.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Food Production — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 2.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Sharing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Realistic (R), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 4.96 |
| R — Realistic | 4.83 |
| S — Social | 3.48 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.45 |
| A — Artistic | 1.45 |
| I — Investigative | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 84.1 |
| ISFJ | 82.1 |
| ESFJ | 81.5 |
| ISTJ | 76.5 |
| ESTP | 58.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISFJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendant and Bartender Helper](https://nuecareer.com/careers/dining-room-and-cafeteria-attendant-and-bartender-helper) — median $33,980
- [Food Preparation Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-preparation-worker) — median $35,320
- [Food Server, Nonrestaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-server-nonrestaurant) — median $35,360
- [Barista](https://nuecareer.com/careers/barista) — median $31,200
- [Server](https://nuecareer.com/careers/server) — median $35,230
- [Cook, Restaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-restaurant) — median $37,390
- [Cook, Short Order](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-short-order) — median $35,880
- [Dishwasher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/dishwasher) — median $34,810
- [Bartender](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bartender) — median $34,340
- [Cook, Fast Food](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-fast-food) — median $30,890

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker