How to Become a Funeral Director: Degree, Apprenticeship, and Exam Steps

More than 60% of the funeral directors working today are expected to retire within the next five years, according to industry reporting — and funeral homes are already struggling to replace them. "There is a severe shortage of funeral directors right now in the country," says Gregg Turner, a funeral director at Thompson Funeral Homes, in a Carolina News and Reporter feature on the coming retirement wave.

If you're considering stepping into that gap, here's exactly what the path looks like: the degree, the state-supervised apprenticeship, the exam, and what you'll actually earn along the way.

What a Funeral Director Actually Does

A funeral director arranges and directs funeral services, works with grieving families on everything from paperwork to the service itself, and often handles embalming and body preparation too (in smaller funeral homes, director and embalmer are frequently the same person). It's steady, necessary work — but it asks a lot emotionally. "You're dealing with people's worst days of their life, so you have to be 'on' all the time," says Scott Pomeroy, a fifth-generation funeral director at Pomeroy Funeral Homes.

Step 1: Earn an ABFSE-Accredited Mortuary Science Degree

Nearly every state requires a degree from a program accredited by the American Board of Funeral Service Education (ABFSE) — typically a two-year associate's degree, though some schools offer four-year bachelor's tracks. ABFSE-accredited programs require a minimum of 60 semester hours, at least a quarter of which must be general or non-technical coursework, plus a hands-on practicum inside a working funeral home.

The curriculum mixes three areas: hard science (microbiology, pathology, embalming chemistry, restorative art), business (funeral home management, accounting), and the human side of the job (grief counseling, funeral law and ethics). Notably, ABFSE data shows the field isn't the family-trade stereotype people assume — in one recent survey year, 85% of graduates had no prior family connection to the funeral business.

Step 2: Complete a State-Supervised Apprenticeship

This is the step with the widest variation, and it catches a lot of newcomers off guard — "how long" depends entirely on which state you're licensed in:

Day to day, apprenticeship life is demanding. "My schedule was like nine days on and one day off — or five days on, and you get two days off," says Kara Norris, a former funeral director and mortician, describing the on-call rhythm of the job. It's not a 9-to-5, and death doesn't keep business hours.

Step 3: Pass the National Board Exam

Once your degree and apprenticeship hours are done, you sit for the National Board Exam (NBE), administered by the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards (ICFSEB). It's split into two separately scored sections:

• Arts section — funeral arranging and directing, merchandising, counseling, legal and regulatory issues, and cemetery/crematory operations
• Sciences section — embalming, restorative art, and preparation for disposition

Each section runs 150 scored questions (plus pretest items) over roughly 75 minutes, taken by computer at a Pearson testing center. You need a scaled score of 75 to pass, and a passing score doesn't expire. Most states also layer on their own state-specific licensing exam — New Jersey's Mortuary Jurisprudence Exam and practical embalming test, mentioned above, is a typical example.

What Funeral Directors (and Apprentices) Actually Earn

Pay climbs sharply once you're licensed, which is exactly why the apprenticeship years are the hardest part to push through financially.

That's a real gap, and pay sites don't fully agree on the apprentice number — PayScale puts entry-level hourly pay closer to $15, while Glassdoor's broader "funeral director apprentice" figure runs higher. Either way, you're earning noticeably less than a licensed director while putting in some of the longest, most emotionally demanding hours of your career. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the field is projected to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035 — about average — with roughly 5,600 openings a year, driven heavily by that incoming wave of retirements.

Is This the Right Career Fit?

The honest answer: it depends on how you handle sustained emotional weight. "Sometimes that can be really hard, especially if it's a young person's death or something very tragic," Pomeroy says. "You have to do your best to be the strong person in the room." Norris, reflecting on working through the pandemic, put it even more directly: "The hardest part for me during COVID was sitting with families and not being able to say, 'You can see them again,' or, 'You can have the funeral you wanted.' That was just heartbreaking."

But for the people who stay, the draw isn't morbid — it's the opposite. "They think that the funeral business is just so morbid because they don't really understand that it's really about the living," says A.A. Dicks Sr., a funeral home owner who entered the field after watching his family's funeral director comfort his grandmother. "The mannerisms and the way in which our family funeral director talked to and with my grandmother just inspired me. I wanted to be like him."

Where to Start Looking

Once you're licensed — or if you're already an apprentice looking for a home to train in — JobSnag's funeral service job listings track current openings for funeral directors, embalmers, apprentices, and crematory operators at funeral homes across the country. You can also browse the full job board for other healthcare and personal-care roles if you're still weighing your options.

Given the retirement wave already underway, the funeral homes that are hiring now won't stay short-staffed as options for long. If this is the career that's been pulling at you, the degree-to-license path above is the whole roadmap — the next move is just picking a program and starting.