The Datum Report

Occupation 5433 · Skilled trades occupations

Fishmongers and poultry dressers

Half of full-time fishmongers and poultry dressers in the UK earn more than £25,394 a year, and half earn less.

Fishmongers and poultry dressers clean, cut and prepare fish and poultry for processing or sale.

How people enter it

Academic qualifications are not normally required. Training is typically provided on-the-job.

What the work involves

• scrubs, de-scales, heads, guts, washes and bones fish
• cuts and slits fish for curing by hand or machine
• Care for livestock prior to processing and through the slaughter stage
• Handles through manual or mechanical means; the removal of feathers and internal organs, the extraction of edible offal, the removal of feet and head from poultry carcasses, trims, fillets, portions, trusses, dresses, weighs or prepares for packing
• Handles through manual or mechanical means; the weighing, labelling, packing and stacking of finished product as required
• Oversees quality assurance, food hygiene, product changeover, or other food production KPIs, and supervise others who are conducting tasks as required
• Responsible for ensuring all slaughter and poultry processing equipment and plant goes through a gross debris clearance, power washed with water lances, food safety detergents application, rinsed with water, sanitiser application ensuring that it reaches the required food hygiene standards

Also called

Butcher (fish, poultry) · Filleter (fish) · Fish processor · Fishmonger · Poultry processor · Process worker (fish, poultry)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for fishmongers and poultry dressers, 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. 1 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

Bakers and flour confectioners · Butchers · Catering and bar managers · Chefs · Cooks