The invention relates to a method for producing sodium acetate trihydrate and anhydrous sodium acetate as byproducts, which comprises the following steps: firstly, taking sodium acetate solution which is a byproduct generated in the production process of trimellitic anhydride, pouring into a material mixing kettle, stirring, and neutralizing until the pH value is 6-9; secondly, evaporating and concentrating; thirdly, putting the concentrated sodium acetate solution in a crystallization kettle, cooling to 60-57 DEG C, adding sodium acetate trihydrate crystals accounting for 0.05-0.5% by mass of the solution in the kettle to provoke the crystallization, and stirring for more than 12 hours; fourthly, centrifugally separating to obtain the solid phase which is the sodium acetate trihydrate; and fifthly, drying the sodium acetate trihydrate in a vortex drier to obtain the anhydrous sodium acetate. The method can prevent the sodium acetate solution from being supercooled, avoids the processes with high energy consumption, such as brine cooling and the like, and does not need to add other crystal nuclei so as to avoid introducing impurities into the product. The vortex drier is used for drying by one step so as to avoid the complicated energy-consuming processes of vacuum concentration, crystallization by cooling, centrifugal separation, drying and the like in the prior production technique of anhydrous sodium acetate.