There’s plenty of data in Gallup’s 2025 Honesty and Ethics of Professions Ratings results to put a smile on the face of any funeral director. A “net positive” rating and an admirable ranking among the 23 included professions are just the start. And you shouldn’t let the fact that the news networks are using these results to decry the fact that Democrats are “held in lower esteem than lawyers, undertakers, and car salesmen” steal your sunshine.
The survey
From December 2-18, 2024, Gallup surveyed 1,0003 American adults from all 50 states, asking them how they would rate the honesty and ethical standards of the people in each of the 23 included occupations. The rating scale options were very high, high, average, low, or very low.
The results placed those occupations in order of net percent high (high/very high rankings minus low/very low rankings) at the top, with nurses, grade-school teachers, military officers, pharmacists, and medical doctors all receiving 53% high or very high ratings and placing them in a “majority positive” section.
Funeral directors ranked seventh in the survey with a 37% high or very high rating, placing you in the “net positive category” above police officers, auto mechanics, clergy, and judges and trailing behind daycare providers. Directors also received a relatively small low/very low rating of 9%, which is lower than the low/very low rating of grade-school teachers and medical doctors. In 2021, funeral directors had a 39% high/very high rating, resulting in a 2% decrease.
On the very bottom of the list are the usual suspects: lobbyists, members of Congress, and TV reporters. Overall, reports Gallup, the list hasn’t changed much since the first survey in 2000 (incidentally, funeral directors weren’t added to the survey until 2018).
Four surveys
Over the last week, two of the major news networks shared the results of two separate surveys that indicated that Americans aren’t exactly happy with the job the Democratic party is doing. A CNN poll “put favorability at 29% — the lowest rating in the 33-year history of the survey” while an NBC News poll showed a 27% approval rating for the party.
To seemingly underscore the unbelievable horror of these results, some outlets took to comparing them to other survey results. For example, the New York Post said this:
- “Democrats have become so unpopular that more Americans believe that aliens are among us than agree with the Democratic Party,” and
- “Dems are now held in lower esteem than lawyers, undertakers, and car salesmen.”
The first quote references a 2020 survey about Americans’ belief in conspiracy theories (think: Sasquatch, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster), while the second refers to the previously-mentioned Gallup poll.
If their point is to make funeral directors feel inferior to (or at least as low as) the Democrats, it won’t work. You guys are trusted and ethical and amazing, and Gallup’s poll proves that.
