Fishing and hunting workers
In brief
In 2025, BLS counted 28,200 US fishing and hunting workers, including the self-employed. The earliest figure here is a Census count of 27,871 from 1870, not measured the same way as today's count. The current technology era for fishing and hunting workers: Electronic monitoring cameras and AI-assisted catch review, since 2015.
Official statistic: latest count.Researched context: earliest figure.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to decline 4.2% from 2025 to 2035.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
Official statistic
AI exposure studies
- 0.9% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023 Official statistic
Data as of BLS Employment Projections 2025-35.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). Fishing and hunting workers: jobs since 1870 [Data set; data as of BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/45-3031
Future History. "Fishing and hunting workers: jobs since 1870." Data as of BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/45-3031.
@misc{futurehistory_45_3031, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Fishing and hunting workers: jobs since 1870}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/45-3031}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }
The access date is today's date on your device.
National Employment Matrix total for 2025 from the BLS 2025-35 projections cycle. It counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (32.2% of this occupation in 2025), so it is on a different basis from OEWS wage-and-salary estimates and is not a like-for-like point beside them.
No cited wage figures for this series yet
Rudyard Kipling's novel Captains Courageous, published in 1897, describes the lives of the Gloucester "salt bankers" who sailed to the Grand Banks for cod; NOAA's history calls it an accurate portrait.
Between 1965 and 1975, foreign fishing vessels caught more fish in US waters than American fishermen did, using factory trawlers anchored just beyond the 3-mile limit.
In December 1994 the Commerce Department closed a 6,600-square-mile area of Georges Bank, once one of the world's most productive fishing grounds, to protect collapsing groundfish stocks.
Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous US jobs. From 2000 to 2017 fishermen died on the job at 114 per 100,000 full-time workers, against 4 for all US workers; 791 commercial fishermen died while fishing in those years.
US commercial fishermen's landings were valued at $5.1 billion in 2023. New Bedford, Massachusetts ranked first in catch value for the 23rd year in a row, driven mainly by sea scallops.
Will AI replace fishing and hunting workers? What the research says
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.
- BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Target year 2035
- Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)0.9%of tasks
What's changing day to day for fishing and hunting workers
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is sitting alongside you here Steer vessels and operate navigational instruments
Sources[2]
AI is sitting alongside you here Remove catches from fishing equipment and measure them to ensure…
compliance with legal size.[2]
AI is sitting alongside you here Direct fishing or hunting operations, and supervise crew members
Sources[2]
How has the work of fishing and hunting workers changed since 1870?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Sailing schooners, dories and baited hand lines
Before steam trawling, New England groundfish were caught only with baited lines worked from sailing schooners and the small dories they carried. Fleets sailed from Gloucester and Boston to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and with no refrigeration most of the cod was salted at sea. Hundreds of schooners worked out of each of those ports, supporting salt importers, ice harvesters and the Essex River shipyards.
Steam trawlers and the otter trawl
Steam-powered trawlers, introduced from England in 1906, rapidly replaced the schooner fleets and changed how fishing crews lived and worked. Cold storage and the frozen fillet moved the industry from salt cod to fresh haddock. By 1930 scientists warned the fleet had grown too efficient for the fish: that year Boston landed tens of millions of haddock while tens of millions of young haddock were discarded dead at sea. The first minimum mesh-size rules for trawl nets did not come until 1953.
Nylon nets, the power block, radar and sonar
After the war, electronics and new materials changed the work on deck. In a NMFS study of the San Pedro, California purse-seine fleet, Eric Knaggs judged nylon netting and the hydraulic Puretic power block the two most important gear changes; by 1961 almost all purse seines were nylon, which lasted several years where a cotton net lost half its webbing each year. A few seiners had radar in 1951; by 1972 all but a few boats did, and several boats were operating sonar, up from one installation in 1969. This is one fleet's record, used here as a documented example of the national shift.
Effect on the workIn the same fleet, unloading fish with a pump took a few men instead of the needed with the older brail, although most fishermen had not adopted the pump by 1972 (NMFS cooperative study).
The 200-mile limit pushes out foreign fleets
From 1965 to 1975, foreign factory trawlers anchored just beyond the limit caught more fish in US waters than American fishermen did. On April 13, 1976, Congress passed what is now the Magnuson-Stevens Act, creating a fishery zone and regional management councils. As the foreign fleets left, American fishermen moved in, many buying larger, more advanced boats with help from federal loan programs, and soon too many boats were chasing too few fish.
Effect on the workIn New England, new boats entered the groundfish fishery at about one every four days in late 1977, and fleet effort built up quickly from 1977 to 1985 (NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center).
Satellite vessel monitoring systems
In 1994 every boat in Hawaii's longline fleet was required to carry a satellite vessel monitoring unit, letting the Coast Guard see where any vessel was at any moment and whether it was fishing in closed waters. Today NOAA's vessel monitoring system tracks thousands of vessels, the largest national fleet under such monitoring in the world. A fisher's position, not just the catch, became part of the regulated record.
Catch shares and individual fishing quotas
Catch shares give individuals, cooperatives or communities a fixed portion of the allowed catch, ending the race to fish. In the Alaska halibut and sablefish individual fishing quota program, begun in 1995, the halibut season stretched from a "race for fish" of a few days to several months, so more of the catch could be sold fresh. NOAA now runs several catch share programs across the country.
Effect on the workFrom 1995 through 2001, the number of halibut quota holders fell and sablefish quota holders as holdings consolidated (GAO). This counts quota holders, not crew jobs.
Electronic monitoring cameras and AI-assisted catch review
In 2015 every boat in the US Atlantic longline fleet was equipped with a video monitoring system that records the catch, a milestone for electronic monitoring in US fisheries. Because a single fishing trip can generate a few terabytes of video, NOAA-funded software now counts the fish caught and identifies the species, flagging footage for human reviewers.
See the same long-arc view for your own profession.
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Browse all rolesFishing and Hunting Workers employment and pay by year
View all 12 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1870 | 27,871 | n/a | Decennial Census 1870[1] Researched context | Report |
| 1880 | 41,352 | n/a | Decennial Census 1880[1] Researched context | Report |
| 1890 | 60,162 | n/a | Decennial Census 1890[1] Researched context | Report |
| 1900 | 69,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1900[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1910 | 68,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1910[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1920 | 53,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1920[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1930 | 73,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1930[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1940 | 64,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1940[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1950 | 75,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1950[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1960 | 41,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1960[2] Researched context | Report |
| 1970 | 31,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1970[2] Researched context | Report |
| 2025 | 28,200 | n/a | BLS Employment Projections 2025[3] Official statistic | Report |