Sushi Chef and Japanese Chef Pay: Official Data, Japan and Abroad

Articles that highlight the high pay of sushi chefs abroad are everywhere, but many give no source or turn one exceptional job ad into a general rule. When you are hiring a chef abroad and need to set pay, the figures you can actually use are government wage statistics.

This article lays out pay for cooking occupations from public statistics in Japan and major countries, and sets out how to think about the salary you offer a chef in Japan. We deliberately do not convert currencies. The last section explains why. A separate country-by-country comparison is in Sushi chef salary by country.

1. There is no statistic for "sushi chef pay"

None of the public statistics we checked, including Japan's, has a category for "sushi chef" or "Japanese cuisine chef". The categories used are as follows.

So what you see here is the level for cooking occupations in each country as a whole. If you are hiring a highly specialised sushi chef or a counter chef, the realistic starting point is around the top 25% (75th percentile), not the median.

2. Japan: pay for cooking occupations

Start with the benchmark chefs in Japan compare against.

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2025 (food preparation workers)

For all workers, the average age is 44.9 and average tenure is 9.2 years. Note that regular monthly cash earnings include overtime and other excess work pay.

National Tax Agency, Statistical Survey of Actual Status for Salary in the Private Sector, 2024

By industry, accommodation and food services had an average salary of ¥2,793,000, the lowest of all industries, against an all-industry average of ¥4.78 million. This is an average across all salaried workers employed throughout the year (including part-timers and others), so for full-time chefs the Basic Survey on Wage Structure above is likely closer to reality.

3. United States: Chefs and Head Cooks

In the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS, May 2025), annual pay for Chefs and Head Cooks is as follows.

The median for general cooks (Cooks, Restaurant) is $37,390 a year ($17.98 an hour), a wide gap from the "chef" title. Whether you hire a Japanese chef as a "cook" or a "chef" completely changes which figure you should be comparing with.

Median by metro area (Chefs and Head Cooks)

By state, the highest medians are Rhode Island at $79,930, Hawaii at $77,360 and Washington, DC at $76,420. The Kahului-Wailuku (Maui) metro area in Hawaii had a median of $84,990.

4. United Kingdom: Chefs

In the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE, 2025 provisional), the median annual pay for full-time Chefs (SOC 5434) was £30,010, £26,531 for all employees, with a median hourly rate of £14.00.

In the UK, however, Chef (5434) has effectively been excluded from new overseas sponsorship since July 22, 2025. Bringing a chef from Japan to the UK is a visa route problem before it is a pay question. For details, see Hiring Japanese cuisine staff in the UK (from 2025).

5. Singapore: Occupational Wage Survey

Monthly gross wages from the Singapore Ministry of Manpower Occupational Wage Survey (June 2024, full-time resident employees, establishments with 25 or more employees).

What you cannot overlook in Singapore is how this relates to the minimum salaries for work passes. The Employment Pass minimum (outside financial services) is S$5,600 to 10,700 a month depending on age, and the S Pass S$3,300 to 4,800 a month, with both rising from January 1, 2027. The Chef median of S$3,850 is below the Employment Pass minimum at every age. When you bring in a Japanese chef, pay is set by the pass threshold rather than the market rate. For details, see Singapore's EP and S Pass.

6. Australia: award minimum wages and visa salary thresholds

In Australia, the statutory minimum wages set by awards are a useful reference in place of market wages. Under the Restaurant Industry Award (MA000119), weekly pay for full-time adults from July 1, 2026 is A$1,119.10 for Cook grade 3 and A$1,221.10 for Cook grade 5.

If you bring a chef in on the Core Skills stream of the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482), however, annual pay must be at or above the Core Skills Income Threshold (A$79,423 from July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027). Even annualised, the award weekly rates fall short of it. Here too, the visa salary threshold is the effective floor. For details of the scheme, see Australian visas for chefs.

7. Canada: LMIA wage categories

For Canada, we could not confirm market wages for chefs directly from public statistics for this article. What we could confirm is the provincial wage threshold (effective July 17, 2026) that determines the employer's obligations under an LMIA. An offered hourly wage at or above this figure falls in the high-wage stream, and below it in the low-wage stream.

In the low-wage stream, round-trip travel and arranging housing become employer obligations, and there is a cap on how many workers you can bring in (details in Canada LMIA for chefs). When setting pay, the first decision is which side of this line you will be on.

8. Comparing without converting to yen

Converting overseas pay to yen and putting it next to Japanese figures looks easy to follow. We have not done so in this article, for these reasons.

• Exchange rates move a lot within months, and the article's figures would soon be out of date.
• Prices, rent, tax and social insurance differ completely between countries, so comparing converted amounts does not compare living standards.
• Working hour assumptions differ. US annual pay is based on 40 hours a week and 2,080 hours a year, Japan's Basic Survey on Wage Structure is monthly, Singapore is monthly: the statistics do not even use the same units.

Instead, we suggest thinking in terms of three ratios.

1. Where the pay sits among local cooking jobs. How many times the median it is, and whether it is in the top 25%. For a specialist Japanese chef, around the top 25% is a reasonable guide.
2. The gap to the visa salary threshold. In countries like Singapore and Australia where the threshold is above the market median, the threshold itself is the floor.
3. Headroom over local living costs. How much is left each month after rent (excluding it if the company provides housing) and living costs. In the end, this is the number chefs in Japan want to know.

When you make an offer to a chef in Japan, listing the non-salary terms, such as housing, travel, home leave and health insurance, alongside the gross annual salary makes it easier to compare with jobs at home. How to write these up is covered in Writing a job posting.

This article is general information, not advice on setting pay or on immigration. Statistics are quoted as published by each body, with their reference periods. Visa salary thresholds are revised often, so check the primary sources below before deciding on pay.