Occupation / job
Crematory Operators
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
Crematory Operators pays a median $43,650 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.06 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
Employment as Crematory Operators stands at 2,970. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
Funeral service suits people who can be composed and organised around other people’s worst week, repeatedly, and be available at hours nobody chooses.
We carry no verified training length for Crematory Operators — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $37,020 to $50,380 — $1,113 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The 25th percentile is $37,020 — $17.79 an hour, and $13,000 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 you cannot be on call for the unscheduled, or if sustained proximity to grief would accumulate on you.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 2,970 people employed as Crematory Operators; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $43,650 is a genuinely representative number for Crematory Operators and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $37,020 at the 25th percentile, $43,650 at the midpoint, $50,380 at the 75th. $13,360 separates the quarter of Crematory Operators at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $50,380. Reaching it from the $43,650 midpoint is $6,730 a year; reaching it from the $37,020 that the bottom quarter of Crematory Operators earn is $13,360.
$6,630 down to $37,020, $6,730 up to $50,380: the midpoint of Crematory Operators is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $20.98 at the midpoint for Crematory Operators, $17.79 at the 25th percentile and $24.22 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 Crematory Operators for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $43,650 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $43,650 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Crematory Operators, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else