This brief answers key questions about the wages that California public school food service workers in various occupations would need to afford local one-bedroom housing, as well as their job quality compared to other entry-level occupations in the state. This brief also shares representative insights from interviews with public school food service workers at all occupation levels in California.

WHY THIS MATTERS

To meet its commitments to improving nutrition for school children, including through the School Meals for All universal meals program, California and its local school districts employ thousands of workers, but many of those workers do not earn enough to afford to live near where they work. Providing students with access to healthy school lunches can help to address ongoing food insecurity and improve a host of student life outcomes. To support the School Meals for All and other local-sourcing initiatives, California will need a sustainable, competitive school food service workforce. However, many districts or programs experience staffing shortages which the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, with most meal programs reporting staffing shortage challenges in 2024. These challenges are heightened in California, which has the highest median housing costs of any state.

WHAT WE FOUND

• Nearly all (94 percent) of surveyed city and suburban public school districts had one or more school-based food service jobs that paid below the wage needed to afford a local one-bedroom dwelling, which we define as “basic housing.” In city and suburban districts, the lowest paying occupation of cashier pays $19.31 per hour, which is $14.29 per hour below what is needed to afford basic housing in those locales ($33.60 per hour). The highest paying school-based occupation of driver earns a median wage of $24.96 per hour in city and suburban school districts, which is $8.64 below what is needed to afford local basic housing.
• About half (55 percent) of town and rural school districts had at least one job that paid below the basic housing wage. In those districts, the lowest paying occupation of cashier pays $2.35 per hour below what is needed to afford basic housing, while the highest paying occupation of manager or lead pays above the basic housing wage.
• District-based occupations are located at district-level facilities and often pay more than school-based occupations. We find that in California, district-based public school food service occupations often pay more than the local basic housing wage, but half of those in urban or suburban school districts (52 percent) had one or more district-based occupations paying below the local housing benchmark. One third (34 percent) of town or rural school districts had a district-based occupation that pays below the local housing benchmark.
• For part-time and part-year occupations, hourly wages may substantially overestimate what level of housing workers can afford. This most acutely affects dishwashers (95 percent part-time), cashiers (89 percent part-time), and assistants or general helpers (77 percent part-time). In city and suburban school districts, those occupations would need a 3.5-fold increase in annual earnings from approximately $20,000 per year to the $69,880 in median annual earnings needed to afford one-bedroom housing in those locales.
• We conducted an analysis of eight different job quality metrics among California public school food service occupations and comparison entry-level occupations in food services as well as other sectors. The metrics are wages, full-time work, regularly scheduled or year-round work, health insurance, retirement benefits, injury rates, on-the-job training, and worker autonomy. Several key entry-level occupations score below public school food service occupations in overall job quality, with school food service jobs generally scoring low on hourly wages, full-time work status, regularly scheduled or full-year work, health insurance availability, and injury rates. The school nutrition assistant or general helper occupation scored below childcare workers, stockers and order fillers, janitors and cleaners, nursing assistants, retail salespersons, and fast food and counter workers. School food service cashiers and dishwashers scored even lower, and dishwashers were only above manicurists and pedicurists and farmworkers and laborers.

HOW WE DID IT

We conducted a school district survey in which we heard from 108 public school districts out of 940 (11 percent response rate) on 16 different district- and school-based food service occupations in the 2023−2024 school year. We analyzed that survey data and combined it with National Low Income Housing Coalition data on housing affordability metrics for one-bedroom dwellings by county or metropolitan area. We also combined our survey data with various publicly available data sources to generate eight different job quality metrics. Lastly, we interviewed 21 different school food service workers to hear their perspectives.