Occupation / job
Slaughterers and Meat Packers
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 $40,130 midpoint for Slaughterers and Meat Packers sits $9,890 under the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is a real living across much of the country and a thin one in expensive metros, so geography decides this more than seniority does.
69,950 people are employed as Slaughterers and Meat Packers. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
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 69,950 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.
Who should not do this
$10,720 separates the bottom quarter at $36,150 from the top quarter at $46,870, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Slaughterers and Meat Packers pays less than moving out of it would.
The 25th percentile is $36,150 — $17.37 an hour, and $13,870 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 the cold, the wet or the line speed would be unsustainable for you physically.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 69,950 figure counts people already working as Slaughterers and Meat Packers, 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
A 1.3x ratio from $36,150 to $46,870 makes $40,130 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,150 at the 25th percentile, $40,130 at the midpoint, $46,870 at the 75th. $10,720 separates the quarter of Slaughterers and Meat Packers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $36,150 and $46,870 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $40,130. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $6,740; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $10,720.
It is $3,980 from $40,130 down to $36,150 but $6,740 up to $46,870. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.37 at the bottom quarter, $19.29 at the midpoint, $22.53 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $40,130 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Slaughterers and Meat Packers, the hourly figure is $40,130 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