What hourly rate should the cook get?
Credit the cook at replacement cost: what the group would pay someone else to do the same work. In May 2025 wage data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median hourly wage is $16.98 for food preparation workers and $17.98 for restaurant cooks. Rounded, that is about $17-18 an hour. It prices the work, not the person. These figures are wages, what a worker is paid, and not the price a catering service bills. Treat them as a conservative benchmark.
Economists who put a dollar value on unpaid household work use two bases. The National Research Council’s 2005 report on nonmarket accounts lays out both.
Replacement cost or opportunity cost?
Replacement cost values an hour at the wage of a worker you could hire for the task. It comes in two versions. The specialist version uses the wage for the specific job, such as a cook for cooking. The generalist version uses one wage, such as a housekeeper’s, for every task.
Opportunity cost values an hour at the wage of the person doing the work, on the argument that the person gave up earnings to do it. The National Research Council report names the problem with this basis in one sentence:
“Using a professor’s hourly salary to value his time in grilling steak, for example, imputes a high price to an activity that is fairly low skilled.”
National Research Council, Beyond the Market (2005), Chapter 3
At a Friendsgiving table, opportunity cost gives the same turkey a different price depending on who roasts it. If Maya is a lawyer and James is a student, the group pays more for an hour of her stirring than an hour of his. That is hard to defend at a table of friends. The report, which is written for national accounts and not for dinner parties, comes down on the same side: its recommendation is to value home production time at replacement cost, ideally adjusted for differences in skill and effort between home and market work.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis made the same choice when it valued household production for the national accounts. Its 2012 study uses the wage of general-purpose housekeepers and calls the result a “reasonable lower bound.” It notes that the specialist wage may overstate the value, because a home cook lacks the tools and practice of a professional.
What the bases pay for Maya’s 8 hours
Federal minimum wage $7.25$58.00
Food preparation worker, median $16.98$135.84
Housekeeping cleaner, median $17.07$136.56
Restaurant cook, median $17.98$143.84
Private household cook, median $23.05$184.40
The cook’s own wage (opportunity cost) Varies by personA different price for the same turkey
Three of the four replacement wages sit between $16.98 and $17.98. The recommended rate of about $17-18 an hour is that cluster, rounded. The $15 rate in the worked example is below all four replacement wages, so the example understates the cook’s credit. The federal minimum wage is far below the cluster: $7.25 an hour, unchanged since July 24, 2009. A rate “around the federal minimum wage” under-credits the cook by more than half against any of the replacement wages. Many states have their own minimum wage laws, so check the local figure.
Which hours count?
Count the hours the job takes a competent cook, not the hours it took a first-timer. The National Research Council report makes the point with plumbing: an inexperienced homeowner spends far more time on the task than a specialist, so pricing every one of those hours at the specialist wage overstates the value. Agree the hours before the day. “Turkey and two sides: five hours” is a number the group can accept in October and cannot argue with in November.
What if the cook enjoys cooking?
Our recommendation is to leave the credit whole. National accountants face the same question, and their answer is useful to borrow. The National Research Council report treats the satisfaction a person gets from doing a task as separate from the value of what the task produces, and it leaves that satisfaction out of the account. That is an accounting convention, not a rule of friendship. But the logic carries over: the group ate the dinner whether or not Maya had fun making it.
Sources: National Research Council, Beyond the Market: Designing Nonmarket Accounts for the United States, Chapter 3 (2005); Bridgman, Dugan, Lal, Osborne & Villones, “Accounting for Household Production in the National Accounts, 1965–2010,” Survey of Current Business (May 2012); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national estimates, hourly median wage for Food Preparation Workers (35-2021), Cooks, Restaurant (35-2014), Cooks, Private Household (35-2013), and Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners (37-2012); U.S. Department of Labor, “Minimum Wage.” The 8-hour column is the hourly rate multiplied by 8.