Will AI replace Embalmers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
4/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 10% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 9% of the work
What the job involves
Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(2)
- Conform to laws of health and sanitation and ensure that legal requirements concerning embalming are met.
- Maintain records, such as itemized lists of clothing or valuables delivered with body and names of persons embalmed.
Out of reach(24)
- Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
- Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.
- Apply cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance to the deceased.
- Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
- Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home.
and 19 more
Also called
Embalmer · Licensed Embalmer · Trade Embalmer · Anatomical Embalmer · Arterial Embalmer · Funeral Embalmer · Funeral Services Embalmer · Restorative Art Embalmer
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