66%
of restaurant and hotel jobs turned over in 2025
The restaurant turnover rate for employees averaged about 66 percent in the United States in 2025. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows restaurants and hotels losing about 66 workers for every 100 jobs over the year, against about 43 percent across all private employers. Put plainly, a restaurant with 100 people on the payroll replaces about two of every three of them every year. Most of the reasons people give for leaving are things an owner can change, and the last section lists them.
What is restaurant employee turnover?
Restaurant employee turnover is your staff leaving the payroll. The restaurant employee turnover rate is the number who left during a period, divided by how many people you employed on average in that period, written as a percentage.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts every departure into three kinds. Quits are “employees who left voluntarily.” Layoffs and discharges are “involuntary separations initiated by the employer.” Other separations are retirements, transfers to other locations, deaths and disability. All three count. Count only the people who quit and you miss about one leaver in four. Table turnover, how many times a table seats guests in a service, is a different number.
A 66 percent rate means 66 departures for every 100 jobs, not 66 different people, because the same job can empty twice in one year. For example, say your restaurant averages 100 people on the payroll and loses staff at the national rate. Over a year, 66 people leave: 50 quit, 13 are let go, and 3 leave for other reasons. The other 34 stay, and they are the people every fix on this page is for. The whole grid below is one turnover rate.
Illustrative: one restaurant of 100 at the 2025 national rate. The split follows the national quits and layoffs rates.
How to calculate restaurant employee turnover rate
To calculate restaurant employee turnover rate, divide the number of people who left in the period by your average headcount for the same period, then multiply by 100. That is how to calculate restaurant turnover rate for a month, a quarter or a year.
Monthly turnover rate
Work it out on the first day of every month, for the month just finished. For example, say April started with 98 people on the payroll and ended with 102.
- 1
Count everyone who left
Count every person who left the payroll during the month: people who quit, people you let go, and people who left for any other reason. April lost 6 people.
- 2
Work out your average headcount
Add the headcount on the first day of the month to the headcount on the last day, then divide by two. April started with 98 and ended with 102, so the average is 100.
- 3
Divide the leavers by the average headcount
6 leavers divided by an average of 100 people is 0.06.
- 4
Multiply by 100
0.06 times 100 is 6. The monthly employee turnover rate for April is 6 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the monthly separations rate for restaurants and hotels between 5.2 and 5.6 percent from April to July 2026 (BLS, Table 3), so a 6 percent month is a little worse than the national month. Measure it on the first of every month and a bad month is still recent enough to ask about.
Annual turnover rate
The annual rate is everybody who left during the year, divided by your average headcount for the year. A monthly rate times 12 gets you close, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics builds its yearly average from the 12 monthly counts (BLS, Table 20): 5.5 percent a month times 12 is about 66 percent a year. For example, say the restaurant started the year with 96 people and ended with 104, an average of 100, and lost this many people each month.
66 leavers ÷ 100 average headcount × 100 = 66 percent for the year
Top: people who left that month. Bottom: running total. Illustrative.
Work out your restaurant quit rate the same way, using only the quits: 50 quits on an average of 100 is a 50 percent quit rate. Once the monthly count is set up, the annual rate is twelve numbers you already have.
Four mistakes that make your turnover number wrong
Most wrong turnover numbers come from four habits.
Run the number once a year and you find out about a bad spring in January.
What is the average restaurant turnover rate?
The average employee turnover rate in the restaurant industry was about 66 percent in 2025, from Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing about 5.5 percent of restaurant and hotel workers leaving in an average month. BLS reports restaurants and hotels as one group, with no separate figure for quick service or full service, and restaurants and bars hold about 12.4 million of its 14.4 million jobs (BLS, food services; BLS, accommodation and food services). In 2025 restaurants and hotels lost staff at about one and a half times the rate of private employers as a whole.
| Year | Restaurants and hotels | All private employers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 72.5% | not reported | National Restaurant Association |
| 2018 | 74.9% | 48.9% | National Restaurant Association |
| 2021 | about 85% | about 53% | BLS Table 20 |
| 2022 | about 84% | about 52% | BLS Table 20 |
| 2023 | about 76% | about 48% | BLS Table 20 |
| 2024 | about 65% | about 44% | BLS Table 20 |
| 2025 | about 66% | about 43% | BLS Table 20 |
BLS rows are its yearly average monthly separations rate times 12, rounded. 2019 and 2020 are not shown because the tables we could source cover 2021 onward. Both National Restaurant Association figures are its reading of the same BLS survey.
The 2018 restaurant turnover rate was 74.9 percent, up from 72.5 percent in 2017. The rate is down from about 85 percent in 2021, and it still means close to two in three. There is no official good rate. Your own number from last year is the benchmark that matters most, because it is the only one measured on your people, your pay and your schedule.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a restaurant turnover rate by state. Its state estimates cover all industries combined. Any state-by-state restaurant figure you see did not come from the federal survey.
How much does restaurant employee turnover cost?
The cost of restaurant employee turnover is typically about 16 percent of what the person who left earned in a year. That share comes from a Center for American Progress review of 30 case studies, which put the typical cost at 16 percent of annual pay for jobs paying under $30,000. To find your own figure, multiply your average hourly rate by average weekly hours and by 52, then take 16 percent of the answer.
For example, take the restaurant from the calculation section. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts average pay in food services and drinking places at $21.94 an hour for 25.2 hours a week in June 2026. That is $21.94 × 25.2 × 52 = $28,750 a year, and 16 percent of that is $4,600 per leaver.
$4,600
One person who leaves (16 percent of a year’s pay)
$92,000
A 30-person cafe at the national rate (about 20 leavers times one person’s cost)
$303,600
One restaurant of 100 (66 leavers times one person’s cost)
$1,518,000
Five locations of that size (330 leavers times one person’s cost)
That is about a tenth of the restaurant’s whole wage bill. The year’s wages come to 100 people × $28,750 = $2,875,000, and $303,600 is 10.6 percent of it. None of it arrives as one line on your profit and loss, so nobody sees it add up. Five locations of that size lose about 330 people a year.
Turn it around and every person who stays a full year instead of leaving keeps one person’s turnover cost in the business.
Why do restaurant employees quit?
Restaurant employees quit for the same top reasons as other workers, low pay, no way up and feeling disrespected, and then for reasons the schedule decides: hours they cannot plan around, too many hours and too few. The best evidence on why restaurant employees quit comes from asking people who did. Pew Research Center asked workers who quit a job in 2021 why they left.
Red bars are reasons about hours. All workers who quit in 2021, not only restaurant workers. Child care is among parents of children under 18. Pew also asked about a COVID-19 vaccine requirement (18 percent).
Forty-five percent of people who quit said they could not choose when they put in their hours. Two of the three most common reasons, no way up and feeling disrespected, are about something other than the paycheck.
How the schedule changes who stays
Unstable schedules predict who leaves. A study in the ILR Review followed 1,827 hourly retail and food service workers and found schedule instability was a strong predictor of turnover for the third with the least stable schedules. About half of that link ran through job satisfaction, and a quarter through conflict with family life (Choper, Schneider and Harknett). The Shift Project reported how many workers were no longer in their job six months later.
- 24% At least two weeks’ notice
- 28% Everyone surveyed
- 35% At least one on-call shift
- 39% Under 72 hours’ notice
- 42% At least one cancelled shift
Workers who had a shift cancelled in the month before were half again as likely to be gone six months later: 42 percent against 28 percent. With less than 72 hours’ notice of their schedule, 39 percent had left. With at least two weeks’ notice, 24 percent had left, the lowest number on the chart.
The six schedule habits that push younger staff out are covered in why Gen Z restaurant employees keep quitting over the schedule.
How to reduce restaurant employee turnover
The way to reduce restaurant employee turnover is to remove the reasons people give for leaving: pay that falls behind, no way up, managers who do not show respect, and a schedule nobody can plan around. If you are working out how to help restaurant turnover, the first six practices need nothing but a spreadsheet and a conversation.
PRACTICE 1
Count leavers on the first of every month
Split quits from people you let go, and look separately at anybody who left in their first few weeks.
A bad month shows up while the people who are left can still tell you why.
PRACTICE 2
Pay what nearby restaurants advertise
Low pay was the most common reason people gave for quitting. Check the job ads within a few miles of you every quarter.
A wage that matches the ad down the road takes away the most common reason to leave.
PRACTICE 3
Show every person the next job up
No chance to move up tied with pay. Write down what it takes to go from dishwasher to prep cook, or from host to server, and tell people.
A prep cook who can see the path to line cook has a reason to still be here next year.
PRACTICE 4
Judge managers on how they treat people
Feeling disrespected was the third most common reason. Ask staff about their manager, and act on what they tell you.
Saying thank you and fixing a problem when somebody raises it costs nothing.
PRACTICE 5
Post the schedule two weeks ahead, and keep it
Two weeks’ notice had the lowest turnover in the research above, and cancelled shifts had the highest.
Two weeks’ notice lets people plan childcare, classes and a second job around your restaurant.
PRACTICE 6
Ask the people who stay why they stay
Ask the people who leave why they left, too. Write both answers down and read them every quarter.
Somebody who tells you why they are staying has just told you what not to change.
Post Thursday for a week starting Monday and nobody on it can plan a class, a second job or childcare. The next four practices are the schedule itself.
Give people a schedule they can rely on
A schedule people can rely on never puts somebody on a day or hours they said they cannot work, and never on a day they already have off. By hand, that means checking every name against every note, every week. One missed note is a shift somebody never agreed to, and a reason to start looking for another job.
To honor employee availability without that checking, each person’s unavailable days and hours go into XShift AI. From then on XShift AI leaves out anybody unavailable that day, anybody unavailable for those hours, and anybody with approved time off, every time it assigns people on its own.
Checked before anybody is assigned
Decide time off by the same rules for everyone
Time off feels unfair when the answer depends on who asked, or which manager read the request. The fix is a written policy covering how much notice, which dates are off limits, how many requests a year, and how many people can be off at once, applied to every request the same way. Decide requests one at a time by hand and two people asking for the same weekend can get two different answers.
Automatic time off approval in XShift AI works through Autopilot rules you write as plain sentences. A rule can check the days of notice given, whether the dates fall inside a blackout range, how many requests the person has already made this month, quarter or year, how many other people are already off, and which days of the week the request covers.
You write, ranked first:
“Deny time off when 3 or more other people are already off those dates.”
You write, ranked second:
“Approve time off requested at least 14 days ahead.”
What happens when a request comes in:
- 1.It is checked the moment the employee submits it.
- 2.Your rules are read in the order you ranked them.
- 3.The highest-ranked rule that matches approves or denies it.
- 4.The request records that Autopilot decided it and which rule did.
- 5.If no rule matches, it waits for a manager.
That is what fair means to the person asking: the same rule for everyone, applied the moment the request arrives, with no favorites. Every request also stays on record with its dates, type, reason and status. Managers can filter every request by pending, approved or denied, and each employee sees their own requests and whether Autopilot or a manager decided them.
Keep employees who clash off the same shift
Two people who cannot work together make every shift they share worse for everyone on it. By hand, keeping them apart means remembering it every time you build a week or fill a gap. Keep putting the same two people on the same shift and one of them will solve it by quitting.
A pairing rule in Autopilot names the two people who should never work together. When XShift AI builds the week, fills open shifts or covers a call-off, it will not put one of them on a shift the other is already working. When a manager places a shift by hand, you decide whether the rule stops it outright or lets the manager push it through after a warning.
Share the hours out, and protect rest
People quit over too many hours and over too few, so spread shifts evenly and leave a real gap between a close and the next open. Uneven shifts are also how your best people get pushed out. In Fair mode, XShift AI hands each next shift to whoever has the fewest hours so far. A rule you write in one sentence, such as at least 10 hours between shifts or no more than five days in a row, refuses any shift that breaks it, and days in a row are counted across every location somebody works.
XShift AI is built for restaurants, and you can fill a week by asking the AI Copilot in plain English. Get fully set up in minutes, then watch it build a week in a demo.
Ten more people staying a year
10 × $4,600 = $46,000 that stays in the business.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average restaurant employee turnover rate?
About 66 percent a year. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show about 5.5 percent of restaurant and hotel workers leaving in an average month of 2025, and twelve months of that is about 66 percent, against about 43 percent for all private employers. The most useful benchmark is your own last twelve months, because it is measured on your people, your pay and your schedule.
How do you calculate restaurant employee turnover rate?
Divide the number of employees who left during the period by your average headcount for the same period, then multiply by 100. Six leavers on an average of 100 people is 6 percent for the month. A monthly rate times 12 gets you close to the annual rate.
What is the average turnover rate in the restaurant industry by state?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a restaurant turnover rate by state. Its state estimates cover all industries combined. The closest official number for any state is the national rate for restaurants and hotels, about 66 percent in 2025, so a state-by-state restaurant figure did not come from the federal survey.
How do I prevent restaurant employee turnover?
Pay what nearby restaurants advertise, show people the next job up, hold managers to treating staff with respect, and give everyone a schedule they can rely on. XShift AI handles the schedule part. It never puts anybody on a day or hours they marked unavailable, or on approved time off. It decides time off requests by the same written rules for everyone, keeps two people who clash off the same shift, and in Fair mode hands each next shift to whoever has the fewest hours so far.
What is the best restaurant scheduling software for reducing employee turnover?
XShift AI is the best restaurant scheduling software for reducing employee turnover, because it builds the week around the things people quit over. It leaves out anybody who marked that day or those hours unavailable. It leaves out anybody with approved time off. In Fair mode it gives each next shift to whoever has the fewest hours so far. And it refuses any shift that breaks a rule you wrote, such as at least 10 hours between shifts or two named people never working together.
How can I use AI to reduce restaurant employee turnover?
Use the XShift AI Copilot to fill the schedule and XShift AI Autopilot to hold your rules. You ask the Copilot in plain English to fill next week’s shifts, confirm, and it assigns them, checking every person against their unavailable days, unavailable hours and approved time off. You write rules as sentences in Autopilot, such as no more than five days in a row, and they are applied every time a shift is filled.
How do I approve or deny restaurant time off requests automatically?
Write your time off policy as rules in XShift AI Autopilot, and every request is decided the moment an employee submits it. A rule can check the days of notice given, whether the dates fall inside a blackout range, how many requests that person has already made this month, quarter or year, how many other people are already off, and which days of the week the request covers. Rules are read in the order you rank them, the highest-ranked rule that matches approves or denies, and the request records which rule decided it. If no rule matches, it waits for a manager.
How do I make sure restaurant employees are never scheduled when they are unavailable?
Have each employee’s unavailable days and hours entered in XShift AI, and every automatic assignment respects them. When XShift AI builds the week, fills open shifts automatically, or looks for somebody to cover a call-off, it leaves out anybody unavailable that day, anybody unavailable for those hours, and anybody with approved time off on that date. The schedule then matches what each person told you they can work.
How do I keep restaurant employees who clash off the same shift?
Write a pairing rule in XShift AI Autopilot naming the two people who should never work together. When XShift AI builds the week, fills open shifts or covers a call-off, it will not put one of them on a shift the other is already working. When a manager places a shift by hand, you decide whether the rule stops it outright or lets the manager push it through after a warning. Talk to both people as well, because a rule keeps them apart but does not settle what is wrong between them.
How do I build a restaurant schedule fast without burning out my staff?
Ask the XShift AI Copilot to fill next week’s shifts, with your rest rules already written in Autopilot. You type the request, confirm, and it assigns the shifts, leaving out unavailable days, unavailable hours and approved time off. Every rule you have written is applied as it goes, so a shift that leaves less than your minimum hours of rest, or pushes somebody past your limit on days in a row, is never assigned.