Jones Wynn Funeral Home

The funeral biz is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," says funeral director Doug Williams. - Gigi Douban/MarketplaceOn a somewhat morbid note: As long as people are dying, there’s no shortage of jobs —  in the funeral business. There were more than 25,000 jobs in the funeral industry in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects. That number is expected to grow about as fast as other occupations. The challenge many funeral home directors face is finding new people to get into the business, even in Alabama, which has the nation’s second-highest concentration of jobs in the industry.Fun funeral-home fact: When part of someone’s face is missing, and that person needs to look good, as in a casket, wax is your friend. Here in Restorative Art class, students are using clay, a cheaper substitute.This class is part of the small mortuary services program at Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham. To get an associate degree in funeral services, there are classes in embalming, biology and management. Students in Restorative Art rebuild faces on mannequin heads.Only five of the 30 students in the class have family in the funeral business. It's odd, given that staying in the family business was how most people, historically, got into the industry.Before he made the leap, 26-year-old Kyle Burgess had to get over a few things. He lives above the funeral home where he’s an apprentice in Anniston, about an hour from Birmingham. “So it used to be like touching a dead body was weird,” he said. “It was just cold and gave you the heebie-jeebies almost? But now it doesn’t anymore. Like that’s part of my job.”Eventually he wants to become a funeral director, like Doug Williams, who owns two funeral homes in Cullman, Alabama. A tour reveals caskets, an urn display, and then this:“It’s like a big bread oven. It’s a big, heavy, fire brick oven inside so it retains that heat pretty much,” Williams said.Doug Williams owns two funeral homes in Cullman, Alabama. He ...