Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers

At a $38,300 midpoint, Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers sits 23% under the $50,020 national figure. The shortfall is $976 a month, which is roughly the size of a rent difference between metros — worth checking before the job is the thing you blame.

145,700 people are employed as Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.

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.

How long it takes to become one of the 145,700 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

$8,820 separates the bottom quarter at $35,350 from the top quarter at $44,170, a ratio of 1.2x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers pays less than moving out of it would.

A quarter of the field earns under $35,350 — $14,670 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.

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 145,700 figure counts people already working as Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.

At 1.2x between $35,350 and $44,170, this is a narrow distribution. $38,300 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.

In cash terms the middle half of Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers runs $35,350 to $44,170 — $8,820 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $38,300.

Between $35,350 and $44,170 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $38,300. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $5,870; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $8,820.

From $38,300 the drop to $35,350 is $2,950 and the climb to $44,170 is $5,870. When the upper half of the range is that much longer, the average is pulled well above the median — which is exactly why this site publishes the median.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $16.99 at the bottom quarter, $18.41 at the midpoint, $21.23 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.