Explore by Career/Personal Care and Service
Embalmers
Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.
- Median pay
- $56,280
- per year
- 10-year outlook
- +1.3%
- Stable
- Typical entry
- Associate's degree
Key skills
- Speaking
- Active Listening
- Writing
- Critical Thinking
- Social Perceptiveness
- Service Orientation
- Time Management
- Reading Comprehension
What they do
- 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.
- Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.
- Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
- Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
- Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.
- Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
- Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.
- Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home.
- Perform the duties of funeral directors, including coordinating funeral activities.
Majors that lead here
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS, Employment Projections) and O*NET, used under CC BY 4.0.