The Datum Report

Occupation 9119 · Elementary occupations

Fishing and other elementary agriculture occupations n.e.c.

Half of full-time fishing and other elementary agriculture occupations n.e.c. in the UK earn more than £26,737 a year, and half earn less.

Job holders in this unit group perform a variety of tasks in relation to the breeding and rearing of animals and fish, catch fish at sea and from inland waterways, assist in the picking and lifting of crops, plant and maintain hedges, oversee the incubation and hatching of eggs and perform other fishing and elementary agricultural tasks not elsewhere classified in minor group 911: Elementary agricultural occupations.

How people enter it

There are no minimum academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job, supplemented by vocational training at an agricultural college. A variety of vocational qualifications in Agriculture and Fish Husbandry are available at levels 2 and 3 and in Maritime Studies: Sea Fishing at level2. Apprenticeships are available in some areas. Fishermen/women are required to undertake safety courses before and during the early stages of employment.

What the work involves

• assists with the shooting, hauling and repairing of nets, prepares, lays and empties baited pots at intervals, operates winches and lifting gear, and guts, sorts and stows fish
• harvests oysters, mussels, clams and seaweed off natural or artificial beds, nets river fish and maintains them in spawning pens, assists with feeding and water treatment, and empties and cleans outdoor tanks
• cleans animals’ quarters and renews bedding as necessary
• extracts semen for storage, selects appropriate semen from store, injects recipient animal and issues certificate giving pedigree and date of insemination
• incubates eggs in hatchery and supplies chicks for meat and egg production and game birds for reserves
• plants cuttings or shrubs, maintains hedges by clipping, pruning and re-planting, and picks fruit, vegetables, hops and flowers
• performs other farming and related tasks not elsewhere classified including sorting and marking livestock, catching rabbits, cutting peat, shearing sheep and sexing chickens

Also called

Grass cutter · Hatchery worker (fishing) · Horticultural worker · Labourer (landscape gardening) · Mushroom picker · Nursery worker

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for fishing and other elementary agriculture occupations 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. 6 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

Farm workers · Forestry and related workers