Hey all you business savvy folks out there, I need some advice. I'm looking at a potential job decorating cakes for an established bakery in the greater Boston area. I've never worked in this field before. I'm hoping that some of you will be willing to tell me what kind of pay can be expected for this position. This is the only place I know of where I can ask. Thank you so much for your help.

I have no idea what the going rate for each area would be. I got a job for an upscale, high-end caterer as a wedding cake decorator about 4 years ago (worked there for a year) and my starting pay was $15/hr and raised to $16/hr but then I had to quit because I had my fourth child and my own business was picking up and I could not juggle both. It was located in Philadelphia.

I guess it totally depends on how high end the place is, what your cost of living is, and what your skill level is. I'd guess in Boston you should make no less than $12/hour....?

$8-$10/hour?

Before I started doing my own thing I called a few places and the highest I found was $12.00 an hour. I live in southern California.

$8-$10 around here.

In the Boston area you should get at least $17 per hour. Have you looked through the classifieds to get a sense of what other jobs are paid?

I guess it depends on whether or not you're working in a union shop. I made $10.50 per hour in 1985 when I quit working for anyone else (that's twenty-five and a half years ago).

Any able-bodied person that shows up to get any amount of work completed is worth so much more than minimum wage or 1985 wagesI certainly wouldn't work for someone else for so little nowadays, nor would I expect employees to do so.

Since you've never worked in this field before, it may be difficult to go in telling them what you want, but if you have the skills and talent to showit wouldn't hurt to ask what you can do for them to make the wages that you need or think you're worth. Much luck!

I was grandfathered in to my wages per union contract, I started out at 8.50/hr in 1994 and topped out at 15.96/hr which is where my wages stayed from about 2000 to 2007(moved out of state and had to quit). All the newer bakery employees I worked with got paid far less due to being hired as non-union option or new union contract...they got paid between 8/hr and 10/hr.
Towards the last few years of my employment I really felt badly about the huge disparity between us "oldtimers" and the new hires. I never spoke to anyone about my wages as I knew they made far less and would never reach the journeyman wages I recieved.

Wow, I had no idea that some places even had unions for that. Thank you for all your help folks. You have given me alot of great information.

There are several web sites that offer salary survey information, might be worthwhile to get one for your local area. For example: http://www.payscale.com