Butchers never went away, they work behind the scenes at the meat section in your local grocery. The stores buy primal cuts from meat packers and slaughterhouses, the butchers then subdivide primals into the most profitable mix of steaks, chops, roasts, ground that sells in that particular store. Butchers add a lot of value between the primal and those neatly packaged cuts on the shelves.

The neighborhood butcher started to disappear along with the neighborhood greengrocer and fishmonger and dry goods stores when the big grocery chains took over. They simply could not compete with the economies of scale, and the public's love of one-stop shopping. Refrigeration lengthened the supply chain between slaughterhouse and point of sale, so there was no longer a need for the butcher to kill the meat, which increased urbanization and public health laws made difficult anyway.

Butchering as a profession has a long way to go before it succumbs to automation, but most butchers these days work for grocery stores and are not independent.