The Datum Report

Occupation 5435 · Skilled trades occupations

Cooks

Half of full-time cooks in the UK earn more than £24,228 a year, and half earn less.

Cooks prepare, season and cook food, often using pre-prepared ingredients, in clubs, private households, fast food outlets, shops selling food cooked on the premises and the catering departments and canteens of other establishments.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements. Training is provided off and on-the-job. NVQs/ SVQs in Food Preparation and Cooking are available at levels 1, 2 and 3. Apprenticeships are also available.

What the work involves

• requisitions or purchases foodstuffs and checks quality
• plans meals, prepares, seasons and cooks foodstuffs
• cooks and sells a range of meals, such as fish and chips, over the counter
• plans and co-ordinates kitchen work such as fetching, clearing and cleaning of equipment and utensils

Also called

Cook · Cook-supervisor · Fish fryer · Head cook

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for cooks, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Bakers and flour confectioners · Butchers · Catering and bar managers · Chefs · Fishmongers and poultry dressers