In the National Restaurant Association's 2025 Operations Data Abstract, full-service respondents reported a median 36.5% of sales for salaries and wages including benefits in 2024. Limited-service respondents reported 31.7%. These are survey medians, not targets for every restaurant.
There is no single comparable rate across every restaurant benchmark. BLS JOLTS accommodation and food services includes hotels as well as restaurants; total separations includes quits, layoffs and other departures. Check the period, industry and denominator before comparing a published rate with your own staff turnover. Separation events are not unique people.
Divide labor costs by sales for the same period and multiply by 100. For example, 32,000 in labor costs divided by 100,000 in sales is 32.0%. Keep both inputs in the same currency and state whether costs include benefits and employer payroll taxes.
Use your own recruiting, training, temporary coverage and lost-output costs rather than a universal price per hire. Separate cash spending from manager time, and avoid counting the same vacant shift as both lost output and paid replacement coverage.
Predictable schedules and easier swaps can help employees plan, but this page does not claim a universal percentage reduction in turnover. Track notice periods, late changes and exit reasons alongside pay and working conditions before attributing a retention improvement to software.
Get practical ideas
Open a ready-made prompt to summarize the article and apply it to your team.
Restaurant staffing statistics are useful only when you know what was counted. A wage-only percentage cannot be compared directly with a figure that includes benefits. An industry separation rate does not tell you how many of your original employees left.
This reference brings together restaurant labor-cost medians, recent employment data and a calculator for your own operation. The labor benchmarks describe 2024 financial results, published in 2025. The jobs section uses the National Restaurant Association's September 4, 2026 analysis of BLS employment data. They are different datasets, not one current-year survey.
Quote-ready summary
Full-service restaurants in the National Restaurant Association's survey reported median salaries and wages, including benefits, of 36.5% of sales in 2024. Limited-service respondents reported 31.7%. The survey drew financial and operating data from more than 900 restaurant operators nationwide. These figures describe respondents; they are not standards or targets for individual restaurants.
Full-service employment below its pre-pandemic level
203,000 jobs
July 2026 versus February 2020
The first six rows come from the Association's Operations Data Abstract analysis. The final two come from its restaurant employment update. Segment-level employment lags the overall series by one month, so the full-service comparison is July, not August.
Restaurant labor costs in 2024
Median salaries and wages including benefits, as a share of sales. Survey results, not staffing targets.
Full-service
All respondents
36.5%
Reported a profit
34.2%
Reported a loss
42.9%
Limited-service
All respondents
31.7%
Reported a profit
30.0%
Reported a loss
34.1%
Bars share a 0–100% scale. Profit and loss groups are subsets, not additional totals.
The difference between profitable and loss-making restaurants is worth investigating. It does not prove that reducing staff causes a profit. A restaurant with weak sales can have a high labor percentage even if its staffing has not changed. Concept, service level, hours of operation and local wages also affect the comparison.
The Association explicitly warns against using its survey results as operating standards. Start by comparing your restaurant with its own recent periods. Then use the appropriate full-service or limited-service benchmark to ask better questions:
Did labor spending rise, or did sales fall?
Did overtime cover a vacancy, a busy event or a scheduling error?
Are benefits included in both figures?
Does the comparison cover the same week, month or year?
For broader context, the labor cost percentage by industry reference uses Census payroll data. Its payroll-only ratios are not interchangeable with these restaurant salary-and-benefit medians. Keep the definitions beside the numbers when you cite either page.
Restaurant labor cost calculator
Enter actual costs and sales for the same period, in the same currency. Include the cost categories you intend to measure, such as gross wages, overtime, employer taxes and benefits. Record that definition before comparing the result with another business.
The defaults are a worked example, not typical restaurant wages or a staffing recommendation. Zero sales has no defined labor-cost percentage. A result above 100% is possible when labor costs exceed sales.
Restaurant labor cost percentage
Use actual labor costs and sales for the same period and currency.
Labor cost:
32.0
% of sales
Compare the same period and cost definition. This result is not a staffing target.
For example, 32,000 in labor costs divided by 100,000 in sales gives 32.0%. If those same costs accompany only 80,000 in sales, the ratio becomes 40.0% without any increase in wages or hours. Check the denominator before deciding the team is overstaffed.
This calculator does not compute overtime entitlements, minimum wages, taxes, tips or payroll. It divides amounts you already know. For the next planning step, use the restaurant staff scheduling guide to turn coverage requirements into a weekly rota.
Restaurant jobs in 2026: keep the periods straight
The Association's September 4 update reports a preliminary, seasonally adjusted gain of 59,200 jobs at eating and drinking places in August 2026. This is a net change in payroll jobs, not a count of new hires or unique workers. It follows declines in June and July, and the Association cautions that monthly changes are subject to sizable revisions.
The same update puts full-service employment 203,000 jobs below February 2020 in July 2026. A headline about overall job growth therefore cannot be assumed to describe every restaurant segment.
These employment series are also narrower than projections for the total restaurant and foodservice workforce. Do not combine a broad industry forecast with an eating-and-drinking-places observation and present the difference as measured hiring growth.
How to read restaurant turnover statistics
Before quoting a turnover rate, check its industry, period, numerator and denominator. BLS JOLTS accommodation and food services includes accommodation businesses. It is not a restaurant-only sample, and it does not isolate hourly restaurant workers.
Total separations combines quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. Quits are voluntary departures, excluding retirements and transfers to other locations, which BLS counts as other separations. An annual sum of separation events can include repeated departures from the same job; these are events, not unique people. A high annual separation rate therefore does not mean that the same percentage of the workforce present at the start of the year left.
Our industry turnover reference separates total separations from quits and explains its annualization. Use that definition consistently rather than comparing a monthly quits rate with an annual turnover percentage.
For your own restaurant, keep a departure log with the role, date and reason. Calculate departures divided by average headcount over the same period. If you want retention instead, follow the employees who were present at the start and count how many remain. Document how you handle seasonal contracts and transfers so the next comparison uses the same rules.
Replacement costs, absence and mental health
There is no dependable universal price for replacing a server, cook or manager. Recruiting fees, training time and temporary coverage differ too much. The employee turnover cost worksheet helps you build an estimate from your own records instead of treating a salary multiple as a restaurant-specific fact.
Separate direct spending from the value of time. If a manager spends part of a shift interviewing, their time has an opportunity cost even when payroll does not increase. If another employee covers a vacancy, count that coverage cost; do not also assume the same shift produced no work.
Absence is another distinct measure. BLS absence statistics do not count missed shifts without notice. The employee absence reference explains that boundary. For operational decisions, record scheduled shifts, missed shifts, notice given and replacement hours directly rather than converting a national absence percentage into weekly no-shows.
Retention and mental health deserve attention without invented promises. Ask employees whether late changes, short notice, pay or workload are making it difficult to stay. Review hours and breaks alongside those answers. A schedule cannot diagnose burnout, and an overall employee survey is not automatically a restaurant-worker estimate. See the burnout statistics and measurement notes before citing a prevalence figure.
Where scheduling helps
Publish a rota employees can check, collect availability before assigning shifts and give swaps a clear approval path. Then track late changes, uncovered shifts and overtime using your own baseline. These are practical improvements; this page does not assign them a guaranteed retention or cost-saving percentage.
Turnozo helps small teams build weekly schedules, publish them to employees, manage availability and swaps, and compare the plan with clock-in records and timesheets. It exports timesheets for payroll; it does not process payroll, forecast restaurant demand, connect to a POS or manage tips. If those restaurant-specific features matter, compare the trade-offs in our 7shifts alternatives guide.
Six median salaries-and-wages shares, including benefits; published October 8, 2025
2024 results from survey respondents. More than 900 operators provided financial and operating data overall; subgroup sample sizes are not stated in the public article. Medians are not universal targets.
Distinction between quits, total separations and industry scope
No restaurant-only turnover rate is inferred from the broader accommodation and food services industry.
Turnozo calculation
Labor costs / sales × 100
Reader-supplied inputs; one period and currency. No forecast or payroll calculation.
We checked the linked Association articles on September 16, 2026. We use its published labor medians without averaging subgroup medians or treating their differences as causal effects. Employment figures are attributed to the Association's analysis of BLS, not to a separate Turnozo survey. The chart uses the same six values as the table; the calculator uses only your inputs.
