Butcher
Also called animal butcher, butchery worker, butchery expert
Butchers order, inspect and buy meat to prepare it and sell it as consumable meat products. They perform activities such as cutting, trimming, boning, tying, and grinding beef, pork, and poultry meat. They prepare those mentioned sorts of meat for consumption.
What you'd do
Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers · ILO- Slaughtering animals
- Flaying and trimming carcasses
- Boning, cutting and dressing meat and fish for sale or further processing
- Preparing ingredients and making sausages and similar products using chopping, mixing and shaping machines
- Curing meat, fish and other foods
- Operating smokehouses or ovens to smoke meat, fish and other foodstuffs
- Cooking or in other ways preparing meat, fish and related food items for sale
- Selling meat or fish to customers, including wrapping, weighing and labelling products, and receiving payment
- Indoors
- On your feet most of the day
- Constant contact with people, including the public
- Some freedom to decide
- Usually under 40 hours a week
- Deadlines most weeks
- Some repetitive tasks
Will there be jobs?
Yes, good prospects16 EU countries are short of butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers now, but fewer jobs than in most work will need filling by 2035.
Solid: measured. Dashed: forecast.
What does it pay?
Below averagePay depends a lot on the country: from about €1,000 a month (Bulgaria) to €4,800 (Denmark), before tax.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see typical pay there, for people under 30, and compared with all jobs.
Among craft and related trades workers in the EU, women earn 26% less per hour than men. Craft and related trades workers · Eurostat
What do I need to study?
Upper secondary or vocationalUpper secondary or vocational training in biology is the usual route.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see where to study and the official course finders.
Will AI change it?
Very littleAI could help with only small parts of the tasks.
Average task score 0.13 on a scale from 0 (AI can't do it) to 1 (AI could do it fully).
See the score for each of the 8 tasks
Based on what AI could technically do when assessed in 2025. It is not a forecast for a future year, and not a forecast of job losses. Scores for butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers. Source: ILO (2025), adapted (credits).