Can Agents Work?

Jobs / Food service, cleaning, and personal care / 39-4011.00

Embalmers

Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.

US jobs
3,890
Median wage
$58,780 a year
Job family
Food service, cleaning, and personal care

Can agents do the work of embalmers?

We read the evidence for the whole job family, Food service, cleaning, and personal care: Not yet (first measured in the last 12 months)

Direct benchmarks exist, but agents complete less than 20% of their tasks.

Evidence: BEHAVIOR Challenge 2025, 12.4% of tasks fully completed (Full task success rate).

0% of this occupation's work, by O*NET work activities, is measured by a direct benchmark.

  • 39%Embalm corpsesNot measured
  • 12%Direct organizational operations, activities, or proceduresNot measured
  • 10%Move materials, equipment, or suppliesNot measured
  • 9%Apply hygienic or cosmetic agents to skin or hairNot measured
  • 5%Monitor operations to ensure compliance with regulations or standardsNot measured
  • 4%Clean tools, equipment, facilities, or work areasNot measured
  • 4%Apply decorative finishesNot measured
  • 4%Maintain operational recordsNot measured

Benchmarks for the job family

These cover work in food service, cleaning, and personal care, not always this occupation's tasks.

Direct evidence

Work benchmarks mapped primary to this family. They set the step when they report how many tasks agents complete.

Also relevant

These benchmarks cover part of this family's work, or have no result yet. They do not set its step.

Typical tasks

From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.

  • Conform to laws of health and sanitation and ensure that legal requirements concerning embalming are met.
  • Apply cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance to the deceased.
  • Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.
  • Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
  • Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
  • Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.
  • Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
  • Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.
  • Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home.
  • Perform the duties of funeral directors, including coordinating funeral activities.
  • Attach trocar to pump-tube, start pump, and repeat probing to force embalming fluid into organs.
  • Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.
Other job titles for this occupation (8)

Embalmer · Licensed Embalmer · Trade Embalmer · Anatomical Embalmer · Arterial Embalmer · Funeral Embalmer · Funeral Services Embalmer · Restorative Art Embalmer