Although a waitress job can be hard on the feet, there are many advantages of it. You don´t need lots of training and no formal education but basic knowledge of maths, literacy and a friendly attitude towards people. There is a possibility to work part-time which allows flexible schedules if your child is going to child-care or school. However, wages vary widely, and there is a huge difference in wages in New York City and the US.
Despite its many benefits a waitress job offers, the real question is how much does a waitress earn? It depends on the type of restaurant and where in New York the restaurant is located.
Waitresses get a minimum wage plus tips on top of that. The federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour but many states have established their own minimums which is luckily on a higher level. California for example has a minimum of $11.00/hour and Alaska has $9.84/hour. In New York Tipped Food Service Workers have a minimum wage of $7.50/hour and Tipped Service Employees have a minimum wage of $8.65/hour.
Income for waitresses
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, waitresses earned an average hourly wage of $11.73 in 2016 in the US. The highest 10% made are $18.49/hour and the lowest earned are $8.22/hour. The top 10% earned a monthly median wage of $3,205 while the bottom 10% only earned $1,424. Median means that half of the workers earned less than this amount and half of the workers earned more than that.
Income by Industry
There is an average monthly income of $2,006 for waitresses working in restaurants. On the other side wait staff at short-term lodging facilities earn an average monthly wage of around $2,382. The best-earning ones are the waitresses working in the BLS category of scenic and sightseeing transportation, who are making a monthly average income of $2,758.
Income by States and Metropolitan Areas
The top earners in the industry come from Hawaii with a monthly wage of $3,092, but there is also a high cost of living on the island. Even though Kauai is the least commercially developed of all Hawaiian islands, waitresses in restaurants and resorts earn an average income of $3,497 per month. If you would work in Kahului, on the island of Maui you would get a monthly wage of $3,322.
Second place is the state of Vermont, where the average monthly income is $2,648. In the nonmetropolitan area of southern Vermont one can earn slightly higher wages of $2,806 per month.
California employs most waitresses in the US, but it doesn´t even rank in the top five best paying states. Waitresses here earn $2,578 per month. Waitresses in the cosmopolitan area of Salinas can however earn an average pay of $3,093 per month and San Fransico region has a mean wage of §3,008.
Monthly wages below $1,667 per month or $20,000 per year happen to be the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
States in the east and west coast of the U. S. Generally pay the highest wages. However, there are also higher costs of living. The pay of waiters and waitresses are modest compared to other occupations in the United States but the job qualifications aren´t as difficult. The training period is relatively short and one thing to be noted is that waitresses earn good amounts of income from customer´s tipping which of course vary by amount.