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Bakers

Also called Artisan baker, Pastry baker, Commercial baker, Retail baker, Production baker

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 236,200 US bakers, with median pay of $37,160 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is a Census count of 51,000 from 1870, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for bakers: Recipe management software + HACCP digital systems, 2005 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.5% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Bakers: jobs and pay since 1870 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-3011

Chicago

Future History. "Bakers: jobs and pay since 1870." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-3011.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_51_3011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Bakers: jobs and pay since 1870}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-3011}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
1700172517501775180018251850187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Baker / Journeyman Baker (craft guild era)
Known then as Baker / Bread Baker / Confectioner (industrializing era)
Known then as Baker (mass production era, Census category)
Known then as Baker / Commercial Baker / Retail Baker
Known then as Bakers (BLS SOC 51-3011)
Known today as Bakers (BLS SOC 51-3011)
Projected to still be called Bakers (BLS SOC 51-3011)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
236K

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$37,160

≈ $36,207 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1267

England's Henry III enacts the Assize of Bread and Ale, one of the earliest consumer-protection statutes in English law. The Assize set the price of bread in relation to the price of wheat, required standard weights, and established inspection by ale-conners and bread-conners. A baker who sold underweight bread faced the hue and cry, public shaming, and sometimes being dragged through the streets on a hurdle with the offending loaf tied around their neck. The "baker's dozen" (13 items for the price of 12) is attributed to bakers adding an extra roll to every order to avoid the severe penalties for short weight. The Assize remained in force in England until 1836, making baking the most legislatively regulated trade in English history for nearly six centuries.

Beat · 1838

Philadelphia city directories list self-employed free African American women as "biscuit makers" and "cake bakers," representing some of the earliest documented evidence of Black women as named professional bakers in the urban US. Baking as a trade was accessible across lines of race and gender in ways that many other skilled crafts of the era were not, because the tools were simple, the start-up cost of a brick oven was not prohibitive, and demand for fresh bread was universal. This early accessibility contrasts with the explicitly racialized exclusions in the baker unions that would form later in the century.

Beat · 1886

On January 13, 1886, representatives from baker unions in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, New Haven, New Orleans, New York, and St. Louis meet in Pittsburgh to found the Journeymen Bakers' National Union. The organizing drive was driven by conditions that contemporary observers described as "a system of forced on-premises lodging, 16-to-23-hour shifts with no days off, low wages, hard manual labor, and dangerous, unsanitary conditions." The union adopted a label as its primary organizing tool, patterned on an Austrian guild symbol brought to Newark by immigrant bakers. The AFL chartered the union in 1887. It would become the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) through subsequent mergers, surviving as a major food-industry union into the 21st century.

Beat · 1895

New York State passes the Bakeshop Act, one of the state's earliest labor laws. The Act limits bakers to 10 hours per day and 60 hours per week, and bans the practice of employers housing workers in basement living quarters adjacent to ovens. In 1899, Joseph Lochner, a German immigrant bakery owner in Utica, New York, is indicted for violating the Act. On April 17, 1905, the US Supreme Court strikes down the Bakeshop Act in Lochner v. New York (198 U.S. 45), ruling that the Due Process Clause protects freedom of contract. The decision opens the "Lochner era" of Supreme Court jurisprudence lasting until 1937, during which dozens of labor protection laws are struck down. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's stinging dissent eventually becomes the prevailing view. Lochner v. New York began as a bakers' labor rights case and became one of the most consequential constitutional decisions in American history.

Beat · 1928

On July 7, 1928, the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri installs the first commercial bread-slicing machine, invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. Rohwedder had first built a prototype in 1912 but a 1917 fire destroyed his blueprints and machine; he rebuilt and obtained patents in 1927. Continental Baking Company adopts sliced bread for Wonder Bread nationally beginning in 1930. By 1933, bakeries are selling more sliced bread than unsliced. "The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped" was the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune's original headline for sliced bread on July 6, 1928, the day before commercial sales began. The phrase "greatest thing since sliced bread" entered American idiom from this moment.

Beat · 2012

Hostess Brands, the company that made Wonder Bread and Twinkies, files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation on November 16, 2012, citing failure to reach agreement with the BCTGM during a strike. The closure eliminates approximately 18,500 jobs across 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers. The US Department of Labor announces an expanded benefit package for the displaced workers. Hostess was eventually purchased out of bankruptcy and relaunched in 2013 with a smaller, more automated workforce, one of the starkest examples in modern US labor history of automation and consolidation following a union confrontation. Wonder Bread and Twinkies production resumed but in facilities with substantially fewer workers than before.

Beat · 2023

The American Bakers Association, in partnership with ndp|analytics, releases research projecting 53,500 unfilled commercial-baking jobs by 2030, with the total economic impact of the shortage estimated at $36.2 billion in forgone output. The report identifies production, engineering, and distribution roles as the areas of greatest need, and an aging workforce headed toward retirement as the primary structural driver. The finding inverts the popular narrative about automation: for baking, the problem is not robots taking jobs but finding enough workers who want them. Concurrently, BLS projects 6% growth for the baker occupation through 2034 and grants O*NET's "Bright Outlook" designation, meaning faster-than-average growth and a high number of annual openings (estimated 39,900 per year over the decade).

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace bakers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+5.5%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 51-3011 (Bakers): 262.4 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 276.9 thousand in 2035, a change of +14.5 thousand (+5.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (10.1% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
11.8%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 51-3011.00 Bakers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.118, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.088 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.147; GPT-4-rated β 0.265. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for bakers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereComplete HACCP monitoring logs, temperature checks, and food safety documentation for each production shift, ensuring critical control points are recorded for regulatory compliance and audit readiness.

Complete HACCP monitoring logs, temperature checks, and food safety documentation for each production shift, ensuring critical control points are recorded for regulatory compliance and audit readiness.[6],[7]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Obtain PCQI certification and position yourself as the shift lead who signs off on AI-generated HACCP drafts, since regulators still require a named responsible human.

AI is sitting alongside you hereGenerate daily production schedules based on incoming wholesale orders, walk-in demand forecasts, and available oven capacity, sequencing fermentation times and bake windows to minimize downtime and waste.

Generate daily production schedules based on incoming wholesale orders, walk-in demand forecasts, and available oven capacity, sequencing fermentation times and bake windows to minimize downtime and waste.[8],[9]

Where your edge is

Own the judgment layer: AI forecasts surface demand patterns, but a skilled baker adjusts for local events, seasonal shifts, and product mix changes that models lag on.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOrder ingredients and packaging supplies, matching projected production volumes against current inventory levels and supplier lead times to avoid both stockouts and excess perishable waste.

Order ingredients and packaging supplies, matching projected production volumes against current inventory levels and supplier lead times to avoid both stockouts and excess perishable waste.[8],[1]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Develop supplier negotiation and vendor management skills; AI tools surface the purchasing recommendation, but relationships and contract terms require human judgment.

Where bakers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Food Service Managers

Production bakers who master scheduling, food safety compliance, and vendor management already perform many food service manager functions; formalizing those skills with business-operations training unlocks a supervisory role with higher wages and more stable hours.

What you'd add
  • · P&L reading and labor-cost control
  • · Food service manager certification (ServSafe Manager)
  • · Staff hiring, scheduling, and performance review processes
  • · Inventory and procurement software (MarketMan, BlueCart)
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of bakers changed since 1700?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Wood-fired hearth oven + hand mixing (pre-industrial craft era)

    The baker of the 18th and early 19th century worked entirely by hand and fire. Flour was ground at nearby mills, leavening was wild-ferment sourdough starter or brewer's barm (yeast from ale fermentation), and the oven was a masonry dome heated by burning wood inside it, then swept clean to receive the loaves. The craft required deep sensory skill: reading the oven temperature by the color of the fired bricks, judging hydration by the feel of the dough, timing the second rise by pressing a finger into the loaf. No instrument mediated between the baker and the bread.

  • Commercial compressed yeast + mechanical dough mixers (industrializing era)

    Two technologies transformed baking between the Civil War and World War I. First, in 1876 the Fleischmann brothers demonstrated compressed-yeast bread production at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, introducing a reliable, standardized leavening agent that eliminated the unpredictability of wild ferment. By the 1880s, compressed yeast had largely replaced barm in commercial bakeries. Second, mechanical dough mixers (initially steam-powered, later electric) began replacing the most physically exhausting element of the baker's craft: the kneading of large batches. A single mechanical mixer could do in minutes what took a journeyman baker an hour of hard labor. These two changes made large-scale commercial baking economically viable and began the long shift from neighborhood craft shops toward factory production.

    Effect on the work

    Mechanical mixers reduced the physical labor required per batch substantially, enabling larger establishments with fewer skilled workers. By the 1890s in New York and Brooklyn, thousands of bakers worked under conditions that the Journeymen Bakers National Union, founded 1886, was fighting to reform: shifts, on-premises lodging, and no rest days.

  • Sliced-bread machine + continuous tunnel ovens (mass production era)

    On July 7, 1928, the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri installed the first commercial bread-slicing machine, invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder. The device not only sliced the loaves but wrapped them. Continental Baking Company adopted sliced bread for Wonder Bread in 1930; by 1933, bakeries were selling more sliced bread than unsliced. The bread-slicing machine, combined with continuous-tunnel ovens, automated wrapping lines, and assembly-line logistics, transformed commercial baking into a capital-intensive manufacturing operation. The skilled baker in an industrial plant became a machine operator and quality monitor rather than a hands-on craftsman. Employment in large plants grew, but the skill requirement per worker fell sharply for production roles.

    Effect on the work

    Industrial consolidation cut the number of independent neighborhood bakeries sharply between 1920 and 1960. Large regional chains and eventually national brands (Wonder, Pepperidge Farm, Entenmann's) employed production workers at scale. The artisan baker as a distinct high-skill craft role did not disappear but became a minority of the workforce, concentrated in ethnic bakeries, pastry shops, and hotels.

  • PLC-controlled ovens + depositors + retarder-proofers (process automation era)

    The 1970s through the 1990s brought programmable logic controller (PLC) technology to bakery equipment: ovens, depositors, sheeters, and proofers became computer-controlled, removing the need for constant human monitoring of individual process parameters. Retarder-proofer cabinets allowed in-store bakeries to receive pre-shaped frozen dough, proof it overnight, and bake fresh loaves without employing a skilled mixer. This technology enabled the in-store bakery expansion at grocery chains (Safeway, Kroger, Giant) from the late 1970s onward, creating a new tier of production-baker employment that did not require high artisan skill but did require process discipline and food-safety knowledge.

  • Recipe management software + HACCP digital systems (compliance and traceability era)

    The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), signed into law in January 2011, was the most significant overhaul of US food safety law since 1938 and imposed preventive control requirements on bakeries that had previously depended on paper-based HACCP logs. Software tools for recipe scaling, ingredient costing, allergen tracking, and digital HACCP documentation became standard in commercial operations. For the baker, this era introduced a new administrative dimension to the job: maintaining auditable digital records of every production run, temperature check, and ingredient lot number. The baker who could navigate ChefTec, CostGuard, or proprietary plant systems became meaningfully more valuable than one who could only mix and bake.

  • AI mixing controls + vision inspection + demand-forecasting systems (AI augmentation era)

    The 2020s brought AI to the bakery floor in three distinct forms. First, smart mixing systems from companies like AMF Bakery Systems use machine learning to adjust automatically for flour-moisture variation and ambient temperature, producing more consistent dough without per-batch human tuning. Second, computer-vision inspection systems detect off-spec products (wrong color, shape, or size) and remove them from the line at speeds no human can match. Third, demand-forecasting tools (OrderGrid, similar platforms) ingest POS data, weather signals, and local event calendars to generate daily production schedules that reduce waste. For the skilled baker, these tools are augmentation: they handle the tedious consistency work and free judgment for the creative and quality-control decisions that remain human. For the lower-skill production worker, the trajectory is less clear, as each AI-enabled system reduces the number of monitoring touches a production run requires.

    Effect on the work

    The American Bakers Association projected 53,500 unfilled commercial-baking jobs by 2030, driven by an aging workforce and recruitment difficulty rather than automation surplus. The 2024 BLS employment figure for bakers is the highest on record, and the occupation carries a "Bright Outlook" designation from O*NET. AI adoption in commercial baking is accelerating from a low base and has not yet produced measurable displacement at the occupational level.

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Bakers employment and pay by year

On record since1700
Latest US employment236,200 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$37,160 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+5.5% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • Canada (NOC 63202)

    Employment, 2020
    44,755, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 63202 Bakers, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
    Median pay, 2020
    C$35,200, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 63202 Bakers, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
187051,000n/aDecennial Census Researched contextReport
1900104,000n/aDecennial Census 1900 Researched contextReport
1950162,000$3,100Decennial Census 1950 (employment) Researched contextBLS historical bulletin 1950 (pay) Researched contextReport
2000156,100n/aBLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
2003157,110$20,990BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004150,900$21,330BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005144,110$21,520BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006139,700$22,030BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007141,560$22,590BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008141,130$23,290BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
2009140,510$23,630BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
2010140,790$23,450BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
2011149,910$23,250BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
2012157,230$23,140BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
2013165,270$23,160BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
2014173,730$23,600BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
2015176,610$24,170BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
2016180,450$25,090BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
2017182,890$25,690BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018180,010$26,520BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
2019184,990$27,700BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020168,890$29,400BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021181,800$29,750BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022205,300$32,780BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023220,230$34,950BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024231,890$36,650BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025236,200$37,160BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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