Contents
- What dessert bakery employment statistics can tell us
- Where bakers work, and how many jobs are in those industries
- Baker pay statistics for bakery and dessert-serving work
- Bakery occupations span production and retail
- Dessert bakery employment statistics and workforce projections
- How to interpret these bakery employment figures
- Sources
What dessert bakery employment statistics can tell us
There is no single employment count here for people who make desserts in bakeries. The available U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures describe the broader baker occupation, selected industries that employ bakers, and the bakery-and-tortilla manufacturing industry. Those categories include work beyond dessert production, so they provide useful context rather than a count of dessert bakery employees alone.
BLS’s Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) estimates that bakers held about 262,400 U.S. jobs in 2025. A separate BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) estimate counted 236,200 bakers in May 2025. These numbers come from different BLS products and should not be treated as interchangeable: one is the OOH employment estimate used in its outlook, while the other is an OEWS occupational estimate for May.
The workplace breakdown helps explain why the occupation is broader than standalone bakeries. In 2025, bakeries and tortilla manufacturing accounted for 30% of baker employment. Grocery and specialty food retailers accounted for 23%, self-employed workers 10%, general merchandise retailers 5%, and full-service restaurants 4%. These are shares of baker employment, not shares of all workers in those industries. The bakery category also explicitly includes tortilla manufacturing.
Sources: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Bakers; BLS OEWS national employment and wage table, May 2025.
Where bakers work, and how many jobs are in those industries
A BLS chart of selected industries with high baker employment counted 77,990 bakers in bakeries and tortilla manufacturing in May 2024. Food and beverage retailers (NAICS 4451 and 4452 only) employed 58,860 bakers that month. These figures are occupation counts within the named industries—not total employment at bakeries or retail businesses. The retailer figure also covers only the listed industry codes.
The May 2024 industry counts complement, but do not replace, the 2025 workplace shares. They refer to a different measurement date and a selected-industry chart. They also use specific industry groupings: “bakeries and tortilla manufacturing” is not a dessert-only category, and food and beverage retail includes a range of businesses beyond bakery counters.
| Selected workplace or industry | Bakers employed | Measurement date |
|---|---|---|
| Bakeries and tortilla manufacturing | 77,990 | May 2024 |
| Food and beverage retailers (NAICS 4451 and 4452 only) | 58,860 | May 2024 |
Source: BLS OEWS chart: industries with the highest employment levels by occupation, May 2024.
Baker pay statistics for bakery and dessert-serving work
The national median annual wage for bakers was $37,160 in May 2025, compared with $50,980 for all occupations. The comparison gives a broad wage reference, not a dessert-baker-specific rate. Within the baker occupation, the lowest-paid 10% earned less than $28,120 annually, while the highest-paid 10% earned more than $49,020.
Pay varied by the industry employing the baker. The May 2025 median annual wage was $41,140 for bakers in general merchandise retailers, $37,640 in full-service restaurants, $37,240 in grocery and specialty food retailers, and $37,180 in bakeries and tortilla manufacturing. These medians describe bakers in each industry; they do not show that industry alone determines an individual worker’s pay.
OEWS reports both mean and median wages. For all U.S. bakers in May 2025, the mean was $38,480 annually, or $18.50 per hour; the median was $37,160 annually, or $17.86 per hour. The mean and median answer different questions: the median is the midpoint of the wage distribution, while the mean is the average. For food batchmakers, another occupation that may be present in bakery production settings, OEWS reported a May 2025 mean wage of $43,750 annually, or $21.04 per hour. That figure covers food batchmakers nationally, not only those working in bakeries.
Sources: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Bakers; BLS OEWS national employment and wage table, May 2025.
Bakery occupations span production and retail
Bakeries employ people in a range of roles. The May 2024 BLS industry chart counted 27,250 food batchmakers in bakeries and tortilla manufacturing. It also counted 3,400 food cooking machine operators and tenders and 2,850 food and tobacco roasting, baking, and drying machine operators and tenders in that same industry.
These occupation counts show that bakery-industry employment extends beyond the baker job title. They do not establish how many workers make cakes, pastries, cookies, or other desserts: the industry includes tortilla production, and the listed occupations can support many kinds of food manufacturing. Nor should the totals be added to estimate unique bakery employees without accounting for the chart’s occupation and industry definitions.
Source: BLS OEWS chart: industries with the highest employment levels by occupation, May 2024.
Dessert bakery employment statistics and workforce projections
BLS projects U.S. baker employment to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, rising from 262,400 jobs to 276,900—an increase of 14,500. The OOH also projects about 36,500 baker job openings each year on average over that decade. Openings include positions created when workers transfer to other occupations or leave the labor force, so annual openings are not the same as net job growth.
A separate BLS analysis projects wage-and-salary employment in bakeries and tortilla manufacturing to grow 5.4% from 2024 to 2034, adding 18,800 jobs. The industry had 350,400 wage-and-salary jobs in 2024 and represented 17% of food and beverage manufacturing employment. These are industry-wide totals, not counts of bakers or dessert-bakery workers. The projection period and unit differ from the OOH baker occupation outlook, so the two growth rates should be read separately.
For wider context, BLS projects food and beverage manufacturing employment overall to increase from 2.1006 million in 2024 to 2.2309 million in 2034. That sector-wide forecast helps situate bakery manufacturing within a larger industry, but it cannot be used to infer dessert-specific hiring.
Sources: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Bakers; BLS Monthly Labor Review: employment growth in food and beverage manufacturing, 2024–34.
How to interpret these bakery employment figures
The most direct measure of the baker workforce is the occupation estimate, but it includes bakers working in retail, restaurants, manufacturing, and self-employment—not only dessert shops. Industry employment figures answer a different question: how many workers in a specified business category hold a given occupation, or how many wage-and-salary jobs the industry has overall.
Dates matter, too. The workplace counts shown above are for May 2024, the OOH occupation estimate and projection baseline are for 2025, and the bakery-and-tortilla manufacturing forecast runs from 2024 to 2034. Keeping those periods and definitions distinct makes the figures useful without suggesting that they measure the same population. For dessert bakery employment specifically, these BLS statistics offer a grounded view of the surrounding baker workforce and bakery industry, while leaving the dessert-only headcount unknown.
Sources
- Bakers: Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- OEWS Chart: Industries with the highest employment levels by occupation, May 2024
- Table 1. National employment and wage data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey by occupation, May 2025
- Feeding the economy: employment growth in food and beverage manufacturing expected to continue through the 2024–34 decade