How much does an institution or cafeteria cook make in South Carolina?

The median wage for institution or cafeteria cooks in South Carolina is $34,960 a year, or $16.81 an hour.

Half earn more than that and half earn less. The figure comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage survey for May 2025.

BLS’s mean (average) wage for institution or cafeteria cooks in South Carolina is $33,270 a year. The median is $34,960.

The mean sits higher when a smaller group of high earners pulls the average up. For a typical paycheck, the median is the better middle.

The median hourly wage is $16.81. At a full-time year that lines up with about $34,960 a year.

BLS May 2025; hourly and annual figures come from the same survey.

BLS does not publish starting pay. The closest figure it does publish is the low end of the range: in South Carolina, the lowest-paid 10% of institution or cafeteria cooks earn under $21,890 a year and a quarter earn under $29,130 ($10.52 and $14.01 an hour).

New hires often start somewhere in that band, but the May 2025 survey does not record experience, so read it as a floor to compare an offer against rather than a typical first salary.

The overall salary range for institution or cafeteria cooks in South Carolina spans from $21,890 for the bottom 10% to $42,680 for top earners.

The middle 50% earn between $29,130 and $37,250 a year, with the overall median at $34,960.

On the median wage of $34,960, a single filer taking the 2026 standard deduction keeps an estimated $29,873 a year, or roughly $2,489 a month.

That is after federal, state and FICA tax, an effective rate of 14.6%.

South Carolina takes $397 of it in state income tax.

On the median annual salary of $34,960, estimated take-home pay is roughly $2,489 a month after federal, state, and FICA taxes.

For workers paid on a standard biweekly schedule (26 pay periods per year), each paycheck is approximately $1,149 net.

No. The median in South Carolina is 6.6% below the national median of $37,450.

Nominal pay is only half the comparison: prices in South Carolina sit at 93.7 against a national 100, so the gap in what the money buys is different from the gap in the salary.

It is 0.5 times the median household income of $69,324. A household often has more than one earner, so a single salary at this level goes further than the ratio alone suggests.

Prices in South Carolina run at 93.7 against a national average of 100, with rents at 80.5, so $34,960 here buys about what $37,291 buys at national average prices.

The top tenth earn $42,680 a year or more. The 10th-percentile wage is $21,890.

Experience, specialty, employer and the part of South Carolina someone works in all move a wage inside that range; the survey reports the spread, not the reason for it.

The survey counted 7,850 of these jobs in South Carolina for May 2025.

That makes the occupation 20% more concentrated here than in the country as a whole. It counts wage and salary jobs, so the self-employed are outside it.