Restaurant Employee Turnover Rate: 2025 Data and How to Lower Yours

If you run a restaurant, you probably don't need a statistic to tell you turnover is high. A number does let you compare your restaurant with the industry, so you can see whether yours is about normal or worse.

What is the restaurant employee turnover rate?

The restaurant employee turnover rate is the number of people who leave in a year divided by the average number employed. A job that turns over three times counts three times. The best public source is the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which reports how many people leave each month in each industry. It puts restaurants and bars together with hotels in one group, "accommodation and food services."

JOLTS reports a monthly rate. Multiplying the average monthly rate by 12 gives a rough yearly rate. Here's how the group has trended over the last five years:

Source: BLS JOLTS, Table 20, annual average total separations rates by industry (2025 data, published March 2026). The yearly estimate is the monthly rate times 12. Separations include quits, layoffs and other exits.

Restaurant and hotel turnover has come down a lot since the 2021 and 2022 hiring rush. The 2025 rate is still about one and a half times the rate for private jobs overall. Many sites still quote about 75%, which is close to the 2023 rate. The 2025 rate is about 66%.

How do you calculate your restaurant's turnover rate?

To calculate your restaurant's turnover rate, divide the number of employees who left during the year by your average number of employees, then multiply by 100.

Here's an example with made-up numbers. Say you had 30 employees on January 1 and 34 on December 31, so your average was 32. During the year, 24 people left. That's 24 divided by 32, or 75%.

Count everyone who left, whether they quit, were let go or just stopped showing up. Use the same method every year so you're comparing like with like. If you run several locations, work it out for each one too. A group average can hide one store that's losing half its kitchen every few months.

Is your restaurant's turnover high?

Compared with the 2025 government numbers, a restaurant turnover rate under about 66% is better than the industry, and a rate well above it is a sign something specific is pushing people out. Is 20% staff turnover high? Not for a restaurant. A 20% yearly rate is very low for this industry, and closer to finance and insurance, which averaged a 2.1% monthly rate in 2025, about 25% a year, in the same BLS table.

Look at where the turnover sits, not just the total. Losing a few servers in the summer is different from losing your second line cook three times since spring. Break it down by role, by location and by how long people stayed. If most of the people who leave are gone within their first couple of months, look first at who you hired and how they were trained.

Why is restaurant turnover so high?

Restaurant turnover is high mostly because people quit. In 2025, restaurants and hotels averaged a 4.2% quits rate each month, almost twice the 2.2% for all private industry, according to BLS JOLTS Table 22. Quits were about 7.2 million of the group's 9.3 million separations that year.

Some of that comes with the job, since hours shift with the seasons. But a quit is a choice, and part of it is in your hands. You decide how clearly you describe the job, how fast you hire, who you pick and what the first two weeks feel like.

How to lower restaurant employee turnover

Lowering restaurant employee turnover starts before the first shift. Here are four hiring changes you control.

Tell the truth in the job ad

Put the real schedule in the ad: weekends, late closes, double shifts if they happen. List the pay range and how tips work. Someone who can't work Saturdays should find that out from your ad, not in their second week.

Reply fast

Many hourly applicants apply to several jobs at once. If you text them back the same day, you're talking to them while the other restaurants are still sorting resumes.

Screen for reliability and fit, not just experience

A great resume doesn't tell you who'll show up for a Sunday brunch shift. Ask a couple of must-have questions up front, like weekend availability, then use a short pre-hire assessment to see who's likely to be dependable and to stay calm when it's busy. Experience still matters for some roles, like a lead line cook, but for most front-of-house jobs, reliability and attitude are harder to teach.

Plan the first two weeks

Give every new hire a set trainer, a written plan for their first few shifts and a check-in at the end of week one and week two. Ask what's harder than they expected. A ten-minute check-in can show you a new hire who's struggling before they stop showing up.

Hiring for several shifts or locations at once? See how IdealTraits works for restaurants.

How IdealTraits helps

IdealTraits is an all-in-one hiring platform with AI that helps businesses hire for fit, not just experience. A restaurant can post a job to 100+ job boards at once and text every applicant right away. Applicants answer AI pre-qualifying questions and take a validated personality assessment, and AI resume matching ranks who applied, so managers spend their time on the people who fit the job best. Multi-unit operators and franchises can run hiring for every location from one place. 18,000+ businesses have used IdealTraits to hire. If you'd like to see it with your own restaurant jobs, book a demo.

What to track next month

Work out your turnover rate for the last 12 months using the formula above, then split it by role and by how long people stayed. Pick the one group that's leaving fastest and change one thing for it, whether that's the job ad, the screening or the first two weeks. Check that group's number again in three months.