Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($29,200) to the 90th ($48,680). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 141,090 Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.09% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Delaware, where the location quotient is 13.23, meaning the occupation holds 13.23 times its national share of local jobs. Georgia employs the most people outright, 12,350 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 22.2% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $19,480 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($48,680) is 1.7 times the 10th percentile ($29,200), a gap of $19,480 a year. The mean of $38,640 sitting above the median of $37,700 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Nebraska posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $47,900, and Georgia the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers stands number 215 by employment and number 746 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 18% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.6% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 22 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $37,700, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 3,940 jobs, 2.8% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Decatur, AL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,630 a year, against $46,600 in Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,142 a month before tax, $1,450 biweekly, $725 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($34,050) to the 75th ($43,450) is worth $9,400 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $41,470 would sit between the median ($37,700) and the 75th percentile ($43,450), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $34,050, is $3,650 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders, Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials, Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers, Prepress Technicians and Workers, Rolling Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic, Upholsterers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.