The Datum Report

Occupation 5119 · Skilled trades occupations

Agricultural and fishing trades n.e.c.

Half of full-time agricultural and fishing trades n.e.c. in the UK earn more than £30,062 a year, and half earn less.

Job holders in this unit group perform a variety of agricultural, practical conservation activities, and fishing tasks not elsewhere classified in minor group 511: Agricultural and related trades.

How people enter it

No formal academic qualifications are required. Training is typically received on-the-job. A variety of vocational and academic qualifications in fish farming, forestry, horse and other animal care are available. Professional qualifications are also available and may be mandatory in some areas.

What the work involves

• nets river fish and feeds and maintains them in spawning pens, cultivates and harvests oysters, mussels and clams on natural and artificial beds, treats water and diseased fish, and empties and cleans outdoor tanks
• navigates and maintains shipping vessels, assists with the shooting, hauling and repairing of fishing nets, prepares, lays and empties baited pots, and guts, sorts and stows fish
• establishes and maintains forest nurseries, forestry and woodland, and diagnoses and treats diseased trees
• patrols a designated area of the countryside to monitor damage, erosion, access to rights of way and the state of footpaths and other facilities, and carries out remedial maintenance work as necessary
• monitors and maintains the level of wildfowl on public and private estates
• manages areas of the countryside and the wider environment, carries out practical conservation activities and assists in promoting awareness of the natural environment

Also called

Arboricultural consultant · Bee farmer · Countryside ranger · Gamekeeper · National park warden · Share fisherman · Trawler skipper · Tree surgeon

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for agricultural and fishing trades n.e.c., full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 8 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Farmers · Gardeners and landscape gardeners · Groundsmen and greenkeepers · Horticultural trades