Chefs have a rock star aura thanks to cooking shows and celebrity chef tell-alls.
Chef Wolfgang Puck, right, arrives for a Oscar food and beverage preview for the 84th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)Once a blue-collar line of work, restaurant cooking has now taken on something of a rock star aura. The airwaves are full of cooking shows, celebrity chef tell-alls, and ads promoting the creative excitement of the culinary world.
A reality check is in order, however. Working as a restaurant chef is not as glamorous or as remunerative as the public is sometimes led to believe.
The American Culinary Federation recently completed a major salary survey of professional chefs, and, among the 2,700 respondents, the group that averaged the lowest salaries (around $51,000 a year) were restaurant chefs.
This compared to averages of around $63,000 for chefs in health care settings and $83,000 for those working in private clubs.
Pastry chefs were among the least well paid of all culinary professionals, with an average annual compensation of about $40,000.
The hours for chefs, not surprisingly, are long, the survey found, with 80 percent working more than 41 hours weekly and nearly a quarter of those responding reported they worked 60 hours plus.
In the restaurant industry, those hours are, of course, primarily nights and weekends, with ten or twelve hour shifts often the norm.
All of that time is typically spent on one's feet in an intense, high-pressure environment. It's little wonder that restaurant chefs tend to leave the field early on, with those having the training and skills going to less stressful jobs in education, sales, or product development.
There's also a considerable gender gap in restaurant chef pay, with men earning considerably more (around $10,000 per year or more) than women with comparable positions.
On the bright side, the unemployment rate for cooking professionals remains low. Only three percent of those surveyed reported being unemployed and looking for work, a rate considerably less than that of the overall population.
Though the evidence is somewhat anecdotal, restaurant chefs also are said to have a higher divorce rate and more problems with substance abuse than those in other sectors of the cooking profession.