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California training programs, and what happened to the people who took them

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Cooks, Private Household

SOC 35-2013 · 2024-2034

Prepare meals in private homes. Includes personal chefs.

How the U.S. Department of Labor describes this work. Published in English only.

What California expects of this job

Typical pay in California
Not reported
Projected openings
6,310
Projected change
+2.4%
Usually needs
Postsecondary non-degree award

Bright Outlook — a U.S. Department of Labor designation
Rapid Growth

The Department's own designation, made from its national projections. It is not this project's assessment and it is not California's: every other figure on this page comes from California's projection, which can point the other way and for some occupations does.

Skills this work uses most

O*NET, the U.S. Department of Labor's occupation database, rates how important each of these is to this work, and they are listed in that order, most important first. The ratings themselves are not shown, because the data carries the number without the scale it was measured on. The names are as published, in English.

  1. Critical Thinking
  2. Service Orientation
  3. Judgment and Decision Making
  4. Time Management
  5. Monitoring
  6. Reading Comprehension

Pay by region

RegionTypical pay in CaliforniaProjected openings
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale MD (Los Angeles County)$98,677770
Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine MD (Orange County)Not reported230
Salinas MSA (Monterey County)Not reported100
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad MSA (San Diego County)Not reported180
San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City MD (San Francisco and San Mateo Counties)Not reported280
San Rafael MD (Marin County)Not reported50
Santa Maria-Santa Barbara MSA (Santa Barbara County)Not reported90

What the pay actually ranges across

A median is one point. These are the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2026 figures for California, and they say how far apart the people doing this job actually are. Read them as the spread across everyone already in the work — not as a starting wage and not as a promise about where anyone lands.

Similar work

O*NET, the U.S. Department of Labor's occupation database, names these as occupations involving work similar to this one — its own reading of the job, not a grouping by code. They keep O*NET's order, and only those California publishes a projection for are shown.

OccupationTypical pay in CaliforniaProjected openingsProjected change
Chefs and Head Cooks$66,13443,670+11%
Cooks, Restaurant$46,017271,050+18.5%
Cooks, Institution and Cafeteria$47,56551,210+9.9%
Food Preparation Workers$40,347195,850+1%
Cooks, Short Order$44,01743,610-2.3%
Cooks, Fast Food$43,115159,630-10.3%

Programs that train for this job — 18