Chef salary in Australia

What qualified chefs earn

The Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile for chefs lists median full-time earnings of $1,423 per week before tax, or about $37 an hour, based on May 2025 ABS data. Around 133,400 people work in the occupation and 78 per cent work full time, averaging 43 hours a week. Check the live profile before quoting these numbers, because they update, and remember a median means half earn more and half earn less.

That median sits below the all-occupations figure of $1,852 a week. That is the honest baseline. The rest of this page is about why plenty of chefs out-earn it.

Seniority moves the number most

The brigade is a pay ladder. A commis chef fresh out of their apprenticeship earns near the bottom of the qualified range. A chef de partie running a section earns more. Sous chefs, who effectively run the kitchen day to day, step up again, and head chefs and executive chefs in serious venues are on salaries that look nothing like the median. Kitchen management skills (costing, rostering, ordering) are what push pay up, which is why the Certificate IV in Kitchen Management matters for the ranks above chef de partie.

Penalty rates: the hospitality multiplier

Award-covered cooks get penalty rates for evenings, weekends, public holidays and overtime, and in a trade where those hours are the job, they change take-home pay substantially. Two cooks on the same base rate can have very different pay packets depending on the roster. Salaried roles sometimes fold penalties into an annual figure, so when comparing a salary offer against an hourly award job, do the maths on the actual hours you will work, not the hours in the ad.

Venue type and postcode

Fine dining pays prestige more often than dollars, especially early on, though the skills compound into value later. Pubs, clubs and hotels often pay solid, steady money with better structure. Hospitals, aged care and institutional catering trade a little pay ceiling for daytime hours and stability. The big premiums are remote: mine site and camp cooks on fly-in fly-out rosters earn well above city rates with food and accommodation covered on site, and regional venues desperate for chefs increasingly throw in housing. Cruise ships pay modestly but your costs on board are near zero.

Apprentice pay, explained

Apprentice rates are set by the award covering your venue, usually the Restaurant Industry Award for restaurants and cafes or the Hospitality Industry (General) Award for hotels and pubs. Your rate depends on your year of apprenticeship or competency progress, and whether you are an adult apprentice, meaning 21 or older when you start, which attracts higher rates. School-based apprentices have their own arrangements. Penalty rates apply to apprentices too, which matters on a weekend-heavy roster. Do not trust any dollar figure a website quotes you, including this one if it had quoted any: put your details into the Fair Work Pay Calculator at calculate.fairwork.gov.au and get your actual rate.

How it compares with other trades, honestly

On medians, cookery pays less than the big construction trades. That is the truth and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What cookery offers instead: the cheapest entry costs of any major trade, work in literally every town and country, a shortage that gives qualified chefs real bargaining power, penalty rates that reward the unsociable hours, and a faster route to running the show, because kitchens promote on ability. If your only measure is dollars per hour at year five, pick another trade. If you want a trade you can take anywhere and climb quickly, cookery holds up better than the raw median suggests.