Published March 18, 2026
Kathryn Moody Senior Editor
Progress on the pay gap has generally stalled, various reports indicate, and it is particularly notable in food service.
Dive Brief:
- Though women make up nearly 54% of the food service workforce and nearly 58% of hotel and accommodation staff, they make only about 70 cents on the dollar compared to men in some of the same roles, according to an analysis released March 12 by OysterLink, a hospitality job platform.
- While the gap is minimal in most front-line roles such as dishwashers and counter workers, bartenders and food service managers see gaps as wide as around $18,000 per year, per data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- “The management gap is the one that should concern the industry most,” Milos Eric, general manager at OysterLink, said in a statement. “You can rationalize some of the front-line differences through tip variability or hours. You can’t rationalize a $17,680-a-year gap between male and female food service managers doing the same job. That’s a structural problem.”
Dive Insight:
The bartending example is notable, OysterLink noted, because bartending is one of the higher-earning front-line roles in hospitality and features many women in the role. But women earn $841 per week compared to $1,197 per week for men, creating a gap of $18,512 over the year, according to the analysis.
Progress on the pay gap has generally stalled, various reports indicate. According to a Payscale report released last year, women earn 83 cents for every dollar men make, and that gap only widens as women age. By age 45, women tend to make only 72 cents for every dollar a man makes.
A recent Glassdoor report also indicated that women’s earnings tend to stall out at 35, partly due to the fact that men tend to advance into roles with higher pay compared to women. Many women tend to leave the workforce for caregiving responsibilities, which can hamstring earning potential, Glassdoor said. But even women that do not leave the workforce for a substantial amount of time tend to make less money than men the same age.
Part of the problem may be structural, recent research showed. Many companies budget pay raises as percentages — but pay raises shown as percentages rather than dollar amounts tend to perpetuate pay gaps, according to research out of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University.