Slaughterers and Meat Packers
Perform nonroutine or precision functions involving the preparation of large portions of meat. Work may include specialized slaughtering tasks, cutting standard or premium cuts of meat for marketing, making sausage, or wrapping meats. Work typically occurs in slaughtering, meat packing, or wholesale establishments.
69,950 people do this job in the US. $40,130 a year.
of the working time. Estimate.
- 0%
- 0%
- 100%
Measured, from Anthropic's usage data (2025). Counts help on part of a task.
On the chosen pace and reliability. Estimate.
Share of the working time within reach, now to 2030
What each choice means: , , , , . Every pace starts from .
At this date and pace, models finish tasks up to 4.4 h long four times in five.
How far this has come
With GPT-4, measured in March 2023, 0% of this job's working time was within reach at . With Claude 3.7 Sonnet, measured in February 2025, 0%. With Claude Mythos Preview (early), measured in April 2026, 0%. Today's estimate: 0%.
A backcast: today's task data with the best model METR had measured by each date. It shows how fast the models have moved, not what anyone forecast at the time.
The tasks
Sorted by . 14 tasks from .
| Task | Kind | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remove bones, and cut meat into standard cuts in preparation for marketing.Done hourly or more by most who do it. | 28% | 21 min8 min to 50 min | Stays with people | |
| Tend assembly lines, performing a few of the many cuts needed to process a carcass.Done hourly or more by most who do it. | 17% | 21 min13 min to 33 min | Stays with people | |
| Trim, clean, or cure animal hides.Done daily by most who do it. | 9% | 25 min8 min to 54 min | Stays with people | |
| Grind meat into hamburger, and into trimmings used to prepare sausages, luncheon meats, and other meat products.Done several times a day by most who do it. | 9% | 21 min13 min to 50 min | Stays with people | |
| Skin sections of animals or whole animals.Done daily by most who do it. | 7% | 13 min4 min to 33 min | Stays with people | |
| Cut, trim, skin, sort, and wash viscera of slaughtered animals to separate edible portions from offal.Done several times a day by most who do it. | 7% | 10 min4 min to 25 min | Stays with people | |
| Slit open, eviscerate, and trim carcasses of slaughtered animals.Done daily by most who do it. | 5% | 8 min4 min to 21 min | Stays with people | |
| Saw, split, or scribe carcasses into smaller portions to facilitate handling.Done daily by most who do it. | 5% | 7 min3 min to 17 min | Stays with people | |
| Shave or singe and defeather carcasses, and wash them in preparation for further processing or packaging.Done hourly or more by most who do it. | 4% | 7 min3 min to 17 min | Stays with people | |
| Wrap dressed carcasses or meat cuts.Done more than weekly by most who do it. | 4% | 8 min3 min to 17 min | Stays with people | |
| Trim head meat, and sever or remove parts of animals' heads or skulls.Done several times a day by most who do it. | 3% | 7 min3 min to 17 min | Stays with people | |
| Sever jugular veins to drain blood and facilitate slaughtering.Done several times a day by most who do it. | 0.8% | 2 min1 min to 4 min | Stays with people |
Within reach, per task: the share of the task's time whose instances are short enough for a model to finish at the chosen date, pace and reliability. Half by: the date half of that time comes within reach.
Jobs that share skills with this one
From O*NET's related occupations. Within reach now and by the end of 2028, long-run pace, four in five.
- Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers0% now, 0% by 2028
- Butchers and Meat Cutters4% now, 4% by 2028
- Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals2% now, 2% by 2028
- Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products7% now, 7% by 2028
- Food Preparation Workers3% now, 3% by 2028
- Animal Breeders24% now, 33% by 2028
Where this job works
The industry groups that employ the most of it (BLS, May 2025).
Where the most of these jobs are
The metro areas with the most people in it (BLS, May 2025).