Salaries, roles and trends in Italian HoReCa work
6,108 positions analyzed between April 2024 and June 2026, of which 1,189 in the latest quarter. From this issue the Observatory becomes a quarterly appointment, with an increasing focus on the present of the market.
- Format
- PDF · 15 pages
- Period
- Apr 2024 – Jun 2026
- Published
- July 2026
PDF · 15 pages · 238 KB
Numbers in summary
Five numbers to read the market
- €1,700Median monthly net equivalent over 12 months
- 40%Full-time offers above €30,000 RAL
- €71North-South gap on full-time, monthly
- 98%Full-time positions above €1,300 net
- 68%Fixed-term with possibility of permanent
The context
An industry in crisis, reorganization and search for a new identity
The FIPE 2026 Restaurant Industry Report cites 114,338 employees lost in one year (-10.3%), with one in two businesses struggling to find staff. Unioncamere's Excelsior forecasts estimated around 301,000 hires in hospitality for the April-June 2026 quarter, with a hiring-difficulty rate around 44%. ISTAT reports that on-call intermittent work grew by +10.5% year over year, the highest figure across all sectors. The Restworld Observatory data tells the other side of this picture: how businesses are responding, in the conditions they offer.
Sources cited
- · FIPE-Confcommercio, Restaurant Industry Report 2026
- · Unioncamere, Excelsior Information System (April-June 2026 forecasts)
- · ISTAT, Job vacancies and hours worked, Q1 2026
- · INPS, XXV Annual Report, July 2026
The 4 findings
What emerges from the report
01
Split shifts persist where double service is the norm
Split shifts, with the long break between lunch and dinner service, are now a minority in Restworld's offers (23% in the quarter), but they persist where service is double and the role is skilled: one in three chef de partie roles works split shifts, almost no bar staff do. And it's paid for: at equal roles, employers who keep split shifts offer a few hundred euros more per month on average.
02
Transparency changes the numbers, not the pay
Since June 7, 2026, Italian law requires all employers to state pay directly in the job listing. On the platform the effect was immediate: the share of listings declaring gross salary rose from 7% in April to 53% in June. What changes is how pay is declared, not how much it's worth.
03
The real problem is job continuity, not hourly pay
The Accommodation and food service sector has the lowest average annual pay in Italy (€11,233 in 2024, per INPS), but also the fewest days worked: 183 on average against 258 for a full-time role. On Restworld's offers, at equal full-time terms, the median is €1,700 net and 98% of positions are above €1,300.
04
The industry is asking for more experience
Only 7.6% of offers accept first-time candidates, while 44% require two or three years of experience. Restworld is a paid service: employers turn to us mainly for the hardest-to-find, skilled profiles. The figure reflects where hiring difficulty concentrates, not a closing door for newcomers.
Salaries by professional level
How much you actually earn, by level
The gap between a kitchen manager and a bar counter assistant remains over €1,000 per month.
| Professional level | Net equiv./month | Estimated RAL | No. positions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen senior (head chef, exec. chef) | €2,463 | ~€41,300 | 225 |
| Front-of-house senior / manager | €1,973 | ~€32,700 | 206 |
| Skilled kitchen (chef de partie, sous chef, pizzaiolo) | €1,976 | ~€32,800 | 1,402 |
| Skilled FoH (chef de rang, head waiter, bartender) | €1,893 | ~€31,300 | 651 |
| Entry-level FoH (waiter, FoH attendant) | €1,544 | ~€25,000 | 1,392 |
| Entry-level kitchen (kitchen assistant) | €1,509 | ~€24,500 | 1,095 |
| Bar (counter staff) | €1,426 | ~€23,000 | 643 |
Monthly net equivalent salary over 12 months. Estimated RAL with band coefficients. The table covers the classic professional segments (5,614 positions): the remaining 494 are roles that don't map to these segments, such as receptionists, pastry chefs, bakers and night porters. For full methodology, see the integral PDF.
The second report confirms what the first had started to show: Italian hospitality doesn't have a pay problem, it has a job-continuity problem. And now, with mandatory pay transparency, restaurateurs also have to learn how to talk about what they offer.
Methodology
How we read this data
- 01
Analyzed 6,108 positions with declared and validated salary published on Restworld between April 2024 and June 2026, across all Italian regions.
- 02
Positions below legal thresholds, with irregular conditions or signs of undeclared work aren't published on the platform and therefore don't enter the dataset.
- 03
All salaries are converted to monthly net equivalent over 12 months. Since June 7, 2026, Italian law requires pay to be stated in job listings: gross-declared offers are converted to net using band coefficients.
- 04
Geographic comparisons are calculated only on full-time positions. Venue-type profile completion dropped in the quarter (from 88% historically to 54%): tables by venue type are calculated only on positions that declare it.
GustoHR
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