Will AI replace Butchers and Meat Cutters?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
3/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 9% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 6% of the work
What the job involves
Cut, trim, or prepare consumer-sized portions of meat for use or sale in retail establishments.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(1)
- Record quantity of meat received and issued to cooks or keep records of meat sales.
Out of reach(10)
- Prepare and place meat cuts and products in display counter to appear attractive and catch the shopper's eye.
- Cut, trim, bone, tie, and grind meats, such as beef, pork, poultry, and fish, to prepare in cooking form.
- Wrap, weigh, label, and price cuts of meat.
- Prepare special cuts of meat ordered by customers.
- Receive, inspect, and store meat upon delivery to ensure meat quality.
and 5 more
Also called
Meat Cutter · Meat Specialist · Butcher · Meat Clerk · Meat Wrapper · Blockman · Cleaver · Meat Butcher
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics