Occupation / job
Butchers and Meat Cutters
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Butchers and Meat Cutters pays a median $40,140 against $50,020 across all occupations — $4.75 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
National employment is 136,430. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
This work suits people who can hold a standard on a moving line and treat the hygiene rules as the job rather than as an interruption to it.
No verified preparation time is on file for Butchers and Meat Cutters. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Butchers and Meat Cutters earn under $35,510 and a quarter over $48,050 — 1.4x, or $12,540 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
The 25th percentile is $35,510 — $17.07 an hour, and $14,510 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if cold, wet or fast-line conditions would be physically unsustainable for you over years.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 136,430 figure counts people already working as Butchers and Meat Cutters, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
$35,510 to $48,050 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
Put in money rather than ratios: $35,510 at the 25th percentile, $40,140 at the midpoint, $48,050 at the 75th. $12,540 separates the quarter of Butchers and Meat Cutters at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $48,050, the 75th percentile, is worth $7,910 a year more than the $40,140 midpoint and $12,540 more than the $35,510 a quarter of Butchers and Meat Cutters settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $48,050 is $7,910 — well over the $4,630 down to $35,510. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Butchers and Meat Cutters earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $19.29 at the midpoint for Butchers and Meat Cutters, $17.07 at the 25th percentile and $23.10 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Butchers and Meat Cutters for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $40,140 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Butchers and Meat Cutters, the hourly figure is $40,140 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else