Finish carpentry and cabinetry

Finish carpentry and cabinetmaking are the woodworking trades of fit and appearance. O*NET defines cabinetmakers and bench carpenters as workers who cut, shape and assemble wooden articles or set up and operate woodworking machines such as power saws, jointers and mortisers to surface, cut or shape lumber or to fabricate parts for wood products.

This is the trade in which the hand-tool tradition survives most visibly beside the machine shop. O*NET records 151 tool commodities for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters, and its core tasks include verifying dimensions and fit, measuring and marking parts before cutting, and setting up power saws, jointers, mortisers, tenoners, molders and shapers. The chisel, the bench plane and the backsaw remain in the kit beside the table saw and the router, and the archive documents both.

O*NET OnLine, the occupational database of the US Department of Labor, reports for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters (51-7011.00), 81,800 people in 2025, a median wage of $22.44 an hour ($46,680 a year), projected growth for 2025–2035 described as decline (-1% or lower), and 6,900 projected job openings.