Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Arrangers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Arrangers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $38,470. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 25,700 Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Arrangers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Iowa, where the location quotient is 2.17, meaning the occupation holds 2.17 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 2,670 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 22.3% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $31,470 or less, and one in ten earns $85,940 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $54,470. The mean ($56,340) versus median ($49,800) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 49 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Delaware at $80,290; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Arrangers stands number 504 by employment and number 525 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Personal Care and Service Occupations, the group median wage is $37,320 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 33% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.8% of the group's 3,159,920 jobs. In 27 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,800, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,160 jobs, 4.5% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $52,740 a year, against $69,610 in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,150 a month before tax, $1,915 biweekly, $958 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,470) to the 75th ($67,140) is worth $28,670 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 $54,780 would sit between the median ($49,800) and the 75th percentile ($67,140), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,470, is $11,330 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations

Sibling occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations: Residential Advisors, Skincare Specialists, Personal Care and Service Workers, All Other, Tour and Travel Guides, Concierges, Baggage Porters and Bellhops. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.