Occupation / job
Embalmers
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
The $58,780 midpoint sits $4.21 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 18% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Embalmers.
National employment of 3,890 makes this a small field. Small fields are relationship markets: the people already in Embalmers tend to know who is hiring before the posting exists.
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 Embalmers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
Between $48,010 and $66,130 there is $18,120, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
At $48,010 — $23.08 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Embalmers still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you cannot be on call for the unscheduled, or if sustained proximity to grief would accumulate on you.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 3,890 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
The quarters are $48,010 and $66,130, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Embalmers is the cost of living where you do it.
In cash terms the middle half of Embalmers runs $48,010 to $66,130 — $18,120 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $58,780.
Between $48,010 and $66,130 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $58,780. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $7,350; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $18,120.
Getting from $48,010 to the $58,780 midpoint is $10,770; getting from there to $66,130 is only $7,350. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Embalmers is $28.25 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.08 and $31.79, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $58,780 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $58,780 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else