Leather sorter
Also called grader, leather grader, leather sorters
Leather sorters inspect and classify leather during and at the end of the production process according to the qualitative features, destinations of use and customer requirements. They work in the tannery and in the warehouses checking the quality, colour, size, thickness, softness and natural defects.
What you'd do
Pelt dressers, tanners and fellmongers · ILO- Sorting and grading pelts, hides and skins according to colour, shading, size and density
- Scraping particles of flesh, fat or protective tissue from skins or pelts to clean and soften them
- Removing hair from skin or hides soaked in lime water
- Preparing hides by curing them with salt
- Removing long, coarse hair from pelts and trimming underlying hair to even length
- Tanning and dressing pelts to improve lustre and beauty or restore natural appearance of pelts
- Preparing bark and myrobalan liquor for treating hides or skins
- Treating hides and skins in tanning solution to convert them into leather
- Tinting or dyeing furs to enhance natural shades of fur
- Removing wrinkles and setting grains on wet hide or skin
- Dressing and applying dyes and stains to leather
- Stretching and smoothing dressed pelts
- Seasoning leather by applying chemical solution or oil evenly on surface by hand brush and allowing it to dry in open air
- Indoors
- A mix of sitting and standing
- Constant contact with people
- Good freedom to decide
- Often more than 40 hours a week
- Deadlines most weeks
- Some repetitive tasks
Will there be jobs?
Limited prospectsFewer 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 textiles (clothes, footwear and leather) 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 0.11 on a scale from 0 (AI can't do it) to 1 (AI could do it fully).
See the score for each of the 13 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 pelt dressers, tanners and fellmongers. Source: ILO (2025), adapted (credits).