A continuously verified collection of U.S. restaurant workforce, employment, turnover, wage, hiring, and HR statistics from primary government sources. Docu-Coach™ maintains the collection so operators, writers, and researchers can quote a number and land on the primary source behind it.
Updated September 15, 2026 · Last verified September 15, 2026 · 52 statistics · 7 primary sources · United States
How many people work in U.S. food services, and how that count moved in the latest jobs report. These figures are restaurants and bars (NAICS 722), not hotels.
How many people work in U.S. food services and drinking places?
12,426,800employees
U.S. food services and drinking places employed 12.43 million people in August 2026, seasonally adjusted.
What it means for operators. This is NAICS 722: restaurants, bars, cafeterias, caterers, and other food-service places. It is not hotels, and it is not the broader leisure and hospitality supersector.
What it means for operators. This supersector adds arts, entertainment, and recreation on top of accommodation and food services. It is the widest common BLS hospitality bucket.
What it means for operators. QCEW counts establishments with employees, not every food truck or unpaid family operation. One company can operate many establishments.
JOLTS publishes monthly quit and separation rates. It does not publish an annual 75–150% restaurant turnover rate. Accommodation and food services is broader than restaurants alone.
What is the quit rate in accommodation and food services?
3.5%monthly quit rate
The accommodation and food services quit rate was 3.5% in July 2026, seasonally adjusted — versus 1.9% for total nonfarm.
What it means for operators. This is a monthly rate, not an annual turnover percentage. NAICS 72 includes hotels. JOLTS does not publish a restaurant-only annual turnover series, which is why this hub does not repeat the unsourced 75–150% range.
What it means for operators. Total separations include quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. This is the closest official monthly stand-in for 'turnover,' not an annualized percentage.
What it means for operators. This is the supersector average for all employees, not a tipped-server median and not NAICS 722 alone. Private-sector hourly earnings overall were $37.75 the same month.
What it means for operators. OEWS medians include base pay plus reported tips where the survey captures them. They are not a guarantee of take-home pay in a given city.
Average weekly hours for leisure and hospitality. This is the supersector, not NAICS 722 alone.
How long is the typical leisure and hospitality workweek?
25.4hours per week
Average weekly hours in leisure and hospitality were 25.4 in August 2026, seasonally adjusted — the shortest workweek among major private industry sectors in that table.
What it means for operators. Short average hours reflect part-time schedules common in restaurants and hospitality. They are a supersector average, not a restaurant-only series.
What it means for operators. This is one enforcement outcome, not a rate. It is here because it is a primary-source restaurant case managers still cite when documenting medical restrictions.
EEOC newsroom release · Last checked September 12, 2026 · Tier A
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people work in U.S. restaurants?
U.S. food services and drinking places employed 12.43 million people in August 2026, seasonally adjusted. That count is restaurants and bars, not hotels.
What is the restaurant employee turnover rate?
BLS JOLTS does not publish an annual restaurant turnover percentage. The accommodation and food services quit rate was 3.5% in July 2026, seasonally adjusted — versus 1.9% for total nonfarm. The total separation rate was 5.2%, both monthly and seasonally adjusted. Those series include hotels.
Why doesn't this page cite 75–150% annual turnover?
That range is widely repeated in trade writing and is not a BLS series. This hub only publishes numbers we can trace to a primary dataset. Monthly JOLTS quit and separation rates are the official substitute.
How much do restaurant managers earn?
Food service managers had a median hourly wage of $33.36 in May 2025. Mean annual pay was $74,880.
How often are these statistics updated?
A protected monthly cron hashes every watched source and re-parses official CES, JOLTS, QCEW, and OEWS series. Values that move 25% or less are applied with revision history. Larger moves, parse failures, and settlement pages stay on the last verified figure until review. See the methodology page.