Embalmers
Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.
- Median pay
- $58,780
- Doing it now
- 3,900
- By 2035
- Up 0.7%
- Usually needs
- Associate's degree
a year
across the country
700 openings a year
to get in
What the work involves
- Conform to laws of health and sanitation and ensure that legal requirements concerning embalming are met.
- Apply cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance to the deceased.
- Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
- Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
- Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.
- Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.
- Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
What to study
The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.
- Funeral Service and Mortuary ScienceSee 12 colleges that teach it
Who it suits
O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.
Hands-on and practical
Organised and precise
Helping and teaching
Careers like this one
Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $58,780 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.