Wine's Workforce Reality
The calculus behind the shortage
I. The market has cleared
The wine industry has spent the last several years describing a workforce crisis. The 2022 ProWein Business Report found that half of surveyed companies reported difficulties finding qualified employees. Trade publications run regular features on the “talent shortage.” The framing is almost always supply-side: not enough people want to work in wine.
There is an alternative framing. The problem is the offer itself.
Donna Parker of WinePro Recruiters put it directly in 2023: “The question is ‘why?’ Is it because they’re not paying enough, the benefit packages, or they won’t let you work from home?” Chuck McPherson of Leap Solutions Group, speaking the same year, observed that the market “feels as if it’s returned to normal” with “a high level of employment.”
These two statements are not contradictory. The market has cleared. It has cleared at terms that many prospective employees find unattractive. That is a price signal.
II. The Compensation Structure
The same framework I applied to wine’s consumer problem in “Wine’s Demographic Reality” applies here. A young professional assessing a wine industry career is not expressing a preference against wine. They are assessing economic conditions. If the conditions do not pencil out, a rational actor declines.
The 2025 Wine Business Monthly and Wines & Vines Compensation Survey, conducted in partnership with Wine Management Group, reports an average salary increase of 4.1% across the industry, up from 1.9% in 2024 and above the ten-year average of 3%. Production roles averaged 5% growth. Direct-to-consumer roles averaged 6%. The headline looks like recovery.
But aggregate figures obscure a widening divergence.
The WMG survey sample skews toward larger operations. Among wineries producing under 50,000 cases annually, the same survey found average increases of less than 1%. Winemaker compensation at small wineries declined 8%. Wine club manager compensation declined 2%. The gains being reported in industry headlines are concentrating at operations that represent a small fraction of U.S. producers. More than 90% of American wineries produce under 50,000 cases. Nearly all East Coast wineries fall into this category.
Larger operations can offer organizational depth, benefits infrastructure, and salary growth. Small operations cannot. And the industry is predominantly small operations.
Steve Treder of Wine Management Group, commenting on the 2025 data, summarized the state plainly: “The wine industry has kind of hit a plateau. They are still seeing compensation growth, but that is more in line with the national average.” He also noted that wine industry compensation runs approximately 5-10% below comparable roles in the broader consumer packaged goods sector. The gap persists because of what Treder calls the “passion premium,” the assumption that non-monetary benefits (lifestyle, product connection, creative work) offset below-market wages.
But the passion premium has limits. As Treder put it: “Everyone wants to love their job, but there’s a point at which you have to pay your bills.”
The absolute numbers tell the story. The 2025 survey reports average winemaker compensation (at the “Winemaker 2” level, typically a head winemaker at a mid-sized operation) at $160,133, up 7% year over year. Winemaking directors average $187,846. Entry-level winemakers average $124,376. Cellar masters average $95,122. Cellar workers average $53,576.
These figures, again, skew toward larger operations. The survey’s breakdown by production volume shows the gap clearly. At wineries producing under 2,500 cases, winemaker compensation averages $85,146. At 2,500 to 4,999 cases, it averages $102,171. At 5,000 to 9,999 cases, $107,379. At 10,000 to 24,999 cases, $118,410. At 25,000 to 49,999 cases, $131,608. The progression is linear: smaller winery, lower pay. And most wineries are small.
Dr. Robert Eyler, offering economic context for the 2025 report, forecast that inflation will outpace earnings growth through the current presidential term. Real purchasing power, in other words, is declining even where nominal wages rise. For workers at small wineries seeing flat or negative nominal growth, the squeeze is worse.
III. The Regional Structure
The compensation picture complicates further when examined regionally. The 2023 WBM survey (the most recent to publish regional breakdowns) found substantial nominal gaps between wine regions. Napa winemakers averaged $132,898. Sonoma averaged $98,565. The Central Coast averaged $97,776. The Pacific Northwest averaged $93,132. The Mid-Atlantic averaged $89,527. The Northeast averaged $74,999. The Midwest averaged $70,786.
At first glance, the Northeast appears to pay 56% of what Napa pays. This looks like a reason for talent to flow west.
But nominal salary is not purchasing power. Napa County’s cost of living runs 61-74% above the national average depending on the index used. Housing costs in Napa run more than 200% above national averages. The median home price exceeds $900,000. Pennsylvania wine regions, by contrast, hover near the national average for cost of living, with median home prices around $300,000.
Adjusting for cost of living, the picture inverts. A Napa winemaker earning $132,898 in a region with a cost-of-living index of 165 has real purchasing power equivalent to roughly $80,500 at the national baseline. A Mid-Atlantic winemaker earning $89,527 in a region with a cost-of-living index of 102 has real purchasing power of roughly $87,800. The Mid-Atlantic winemaker can buy more with less.
I have spoken with winemakers who made the move from California to the East Coast. They describe dramatic quality-of-life improvements: trading a rented room for a three-story house on acreage. The economics favor the move.
Yet the flow remains a trickle. If the real wages are comparable and the housing economics favor the East Coast, why doesn’t talent migrate?
Because the East Coast has an infrastructure problem.
First, position scarcity: there are not enough jobs. A winemaker in Napa who loses a position can find another within commuting distance. A winemaker in Pennsylvania who loses a position may have no option within two hours. Second, career continuity risk: if the East Coast doesn’t work out, there is no fallback. The coasts are not interchangeable labor markets. Third, succession pipelines are disconnected. California has brokers, recruiters, and informal networks that match outgoing owners with incoming talent. The East Coast market is fragmented, and the matchmaking infrastructure does not exist. Fourth, the network doesn’t reach. East Coast opportunities are invisible to California talent because the markets do not overlap.
The compensation is adequate. The career infrastructure is not.
IV. The Structural Constraints
Two additional dynamics compound the problem.
The first is mobility. The 2025 iHire Talent Retention Report found that workers across industries are “job hugging,” staying in positions out of caution rather than satisfaction. In wine specifically, the pattern is familiar. Jim Shanahan of Purple Wine & Spirits observed in 2023 that “stability” was the dominant theme in hiring conversations. Tom Hill of Hill & Associates noted the implication years earlier: “The higher the position, the fewer job opportunities available. It’s tough.” When incumbents do not leave, the pipeline freezes. Wage pressure diminishes because workers are not bidding up salaries through competitive movement. New talent cannot enter because no positions open.
The second is succession. Roughly 10,000 Baby Boomers reach age 65 every day in the United States. Industry surveys suggest that 58% or more of small business owners have no transition plan. In the wine industry, Boomer founders are aging out of operations they built over decades. Many will sell rather than transfer. Some will close.
In California, this is already visible. Industry observers estimate that California is losing roughly one winery per day in 2025, with 500 fewer bonded wineries than the prior year. The East Coast picture is different: the region grew from 25% to 29% of U.S. wineries between 2019 and 2025. Pennsylvania’s winery count held nearly flat, declining from 402 to 401(*). The East Coast is not contracting, but it is plateauing, and it is plateauing on a Boomer-heavy ownership base. When those transitions fail (no regional acquirer, no private equity interest in sub-5,000-case operations), the result is closure.
* One thing that should be highlighted in Pennsylvania is the growth of out of state wineries shipping in shiners and calling themselves a Pennsylvanian winery. This may be accounting for the lack of decline that many other states have seen. For further information, please read my first article on the Loophole Destroying the PA Wine Industry
V. Closing
I am a winemaker. I am not leaving the industry. But I also have advantages that many do not: I work for a winery with a healthy transition plan, an MBA that provides off-ramp options, a working spouse, and no undergraduate debt. The path I took is narrowing for those behind me.
The passion premium always assumed a quality of life that no longer exists at current wages in California’s wine regions. A winemaker earning $130,000 in Napa cannot afford a home in Napa.
The East Coast offers a different equation: real wages that match or exceed California, housing that a winemaker can actually afford, and quality of life that does not require a second income to sustain. What it lacks is career infrastructure. Too few positions. Too flat organizations. No succession pipelines that create ownership pathways. A talent market invisible to the coasts that could supply it.
The wineries that survive the coming decade will be those that build operations worth joining. That means realistic compensation, yes. But it also means advancement structures within small organizations, succession paths that don’t dead-end, and visibility to the talent that could fill them…. pretty easy problem, right?
Sources
Wine Business Monthly / Wine Management Group, “2025 Salary Survey Report: Production, DTC Roles Lead Salary Growth,” Wine Business Monthly, October 2025. https://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/article/308079
Wine Business Monthly / Wine Management Group, “2024 Salary Survey Report: Average Increase for Salaries is 2%,” Wine Business Monthly, October 2024. https://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/article/292594
Wine Business Monthly / Wine Management Group, “Salaries, Raises, and Closing the Gap,” Wine Business Monthly, October 2023. https://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/article/276625
Western Management Group, Wine Industry Compensation Survey (methodology and participation information). https://www.wmgnet.com/dnn8/Salary-Surveys/USA/Wine-Industry-Compensation-Survey
ProWein, Business Report 2022 (full report). https://www.prowein.com/en/Visit/Services/Business_Reports/Business_Report_2022
iHire, “2025 Talent Retention Report,” November 2025. https://www.ihire.com/resourcecenter/employer/pages/talent-retention-report-2025
WinePro Recruiters International (Donna Parker). https://wineprorecruiters.com/
AreaVibes, "Cost of Living in Napa, CA" (C2ER data). https://www.areavibes.com/napa-ca/cost-of-living/
Gallup, "Most Small-Business Owners Lack a Succession Plan," December 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/657362/small-business-owners-lack-succession-plan.aspx