Here’s Who Gives and Gets the Best Tips

PayScale, a site that collects salary data, has released a new study looking at who gets tipped well — and who’s doing the big tipping.

The study found that the typical waiter makes more than 60 percent of his or her income in tips. The federal minimum wage for waitstaff is lower than for most workers — just $2.13 an hour, as it has been for decades. Tips are supposed to make up the difference and bring them to at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Here are some of the other findings:

• The worker with the highest median hourly tip is — surprise — the stripper, who gets $25.40 that way.
• Typical stripper tips are nearly double the rate of the next highest profession’s, the casino dealer. After that, the next best-tipped are sommeliers, bartenders and musicians.
• The median casino dealer gets more than 60 percent of his pay as tips — about the same as a waiter. Chauffeurs get about one-third of their income, and cab drivers one-quarter of it, in tips.
• Several management jobs are tipped, including bar, restaurant and salon managers.
• Baby sitters usually aren’t tipped by people making less than $25,000 a year, but are tipped generously by people who make more than $100,000 a year. Bartenders, however, are pretty much tipped the same by everyone regardless of income.
• Those who make less than $25,000 a year tip waitstaff about 15 percent, while everyone else tips about 20 percent.
• Men tip about the same as women.
• There’s not much difference in tipping across generations, with one exception: Generation Y, or the millennials, tip delivery drivers more than older Americans do.
• If your job is walking dogs, move to New England. They tend to tip about 10 percent, while most other regions of the U.S. don’t tip at all.

Whose tips are you most surprised by? Comment below or on our Facebook page.