---
title: "Food Stylist"
description: "Prepares and arranges food so it looks its best on camera for advertising, packaging, cookbooks, magazines, film, and social media."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-stylist"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Food Stylist

**Category:** Food Preparation and Serving Related · **SOC code:** 35-2013 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 35-2013.00

Prepares and arranges food so it looks its best on camera for advertising, packaging, cookbooks, magazines, film, and social media.

Also advertised as: Food Styling Specialist; Prop and Food Stylist; Culinary Stylist; Commercial Food Stylist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $47,940 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $23.05/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $36,090 to $91,130, with the middle half between $40,630 and $55,450
- **Total US employment:** 1,100
- **Typical entry education:** Certificate
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.1% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,000 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 1,100 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $36,090 |
| 25th | $40,630 |
| 50th (median) | $47,940 |
| 75th | $55,450 |
| 90th | $91,130 |
| Mean (average) | $53,680 |

### Pay by state

The 1 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NY | $37,440 | $34,692 | 140 |

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 35,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 37,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,800 jobs, or +5.1%. Faster than average: 5.1% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Postsecondary nondegree award (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 38.5% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 30.8% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 15.4% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 11.5% |
| Some College Courses | 3.9% |

## What the work involves

- Read client briefs and plan food, recipes, and shopping lists for a shoot
- Cook and assemble food so it looks fresh and appealing on camera
- Select and prepare the best-looking ingredients as hero items
- Arrange plates, props, and surfaces with the photographer and art director
- Keep food looking fresh under hot lights during long shoots
- Follow truth-in-advertising rules when styling a client's actual product
- Test recipes ahead of cookbook and editorial shoots

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.8 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.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Material Resources — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Food Production — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Near Vision — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 3.1 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 Realistic (R), Artistic (A), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.11 |
| A — Artistic | 4.44 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.93 |
| S — Social | 3.78 |
| C — Conventional | 3.71 |
| I — Investigative | 1.40 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 67.0 |
| ESFP | 61.7 |
| ISFJ | 60.7 |
| ESTJ | 58.8 |
| ENFJ | 55.9 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Cook, Private Household](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-private-household) — median $47,940
- [Cook, Restaurant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-restaurant) — median $37,390
- [Chef](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chef) — median $62,470
- [Cook, Institution and Cafeteria](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-institution-and-cafeteria) — median $37,450
- [Food Preparation Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-preparation-worker) — median $35,320
- [Cook, Short Order](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-short-order) — median $35,880
- [Cook, Fast Food](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cook-fast-food) — median $30,890
- [Baker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/baker) — median $37,160
- [Food Service Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-service-manager) — median $69,390
- [Fast Food and Counter Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fast-food-and-counter-worker) — median $31,200

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 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, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **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 31.0 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/food-stylist