Isn’t that fairly common for seafarers worldwide?
Most start to look for other type of work after they start a family.
Either a shore based job within shipping, or a total change of career.
I’ll chime in about the particular shortage of seafarers I’m seeing in the USA. I have people who advertise for, vet, hire, and train mariners, and keep stats on all that, so I may have a little more insight than others.
Right now in the USA there are a lot of captains/limited license, and cooks, chasing work. At the same time, ABs and deckhands are scarce. Meaning, markedly fewer looking for work than in 2019. We know this from studying advertising, applications, and BLS labor statistics, as well as just asking around.
My theory: C19 pre-sailing quarantines, C19 infections, a reluctance for mariners to switch jobs during a pandemic, are all reducing the number of unlicensed people available in the job pool at any one time.
At the same time, I believe many shoreside employers are struggling to find enough good people to work. The high unemployment we see right now is mostly focused in the service sector. But factories making construction supplies, etc., are booming, they’re hiring, right when a lot of people are stuck at home because their kids are doing distance learning. So fewer people can go to sea, and they take shore jobs.
The overabundance of captains has to do with the relative quiet in the oil fields. A cook can sail on deck, a deckhand can work in the engine room. Captains–old captains–just want to sail as captain. Maybe as mate, but I’m seeing few of those looking for work, too.
This last month there’s been a big spike in cooks looking for work, when for the longest time they have been rare. Statistical fluke or something else?
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Who are these cook people?
Might have something to do with all the restaurants reducing employees due to Covid
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The corollary is that since the 1990’s the number of people looking for work as a sea cook had been steadily decreasing, until in the last ten years they have been very scarce indeed. My guess has been that with rise of “foody culture” people that can cook have been in demand shoreside at good wages, with no need to go to sea. But as you said, with the pandemic, they’re suddenly out of work.
But the interesting question is, the pandemic has been going on for a year now, and in only the last month have the number of cooks learning for work on boats spiked upwards.
There is plenty of tugboat crew available, but most of them are substandard. Its difficult for good guys to find good jobs, and it’s also difficult for companies to find good people.
Resumes have become useless. Every advertised opening produces a lot of resumes (far too many to read), but 90% of them are not even close to being qualified.
Wages have had minimal increases in the past 10 years. Adjusted for true inflation, wages have decreased considerably in the past 30 years. Wages are long overdue for a big increase.
Most owners have decided to hire cheap warm bodies with the necessary endorsements over paying good wages for quality mariners.
Big companies are hamstrung by ineffective bureaucratic HR processes that were designed for hiring typical shoreside employees, not mariners. Small companies scramble to hire on a crisis basis; it’s mostly by chance.
Lots of mariners, especially engineers, have other options. In some areas, construction jobs are very competitive with going to sea. In some areas, there are self-employment opportunities, that are competitive with going to sea.
The best way to get good people is to hire them away from somebody else. That takes more money.
Wages need to increase.
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This is a thing in the Seattle area. The pandemic slowed construction down in the first part of last year, but it’s been go, go, go since then, and they pay top dollar. As far as I am concerned , the USA’s top manufacturing export is buildings. We make them, and foreigners buy up the mortgages. Not a political rant, just a commercial observation.
We see that too. Plenty of applications coming in, but most are just people applying in order to qualify for unemployment, or clueless, burnt-out techies.
To be honest, my instinct is that, in aggregate, mariners wages have kept pace with inflation (19% cumulative) for the past ten years, according to BLS figures. But I don’t have the BLS mariner wage figures in front of me. I’ll see if I can fish them out.
I’d be curious to see mariner wage scale. My guess is it has keep pace with inflation, but is being outpaced by other industries that are growing more rapidly. Warm bodies seem to be the new norm and any motivated mariner that actually upgrades/works hard at the profession is less likely to be rewarded by said company simply because they don’t need to. I think the glut of licenses is a problem too, since any motivated deckhand is going to look at their future prospects and realize it probably isn’t worth the wait to try and get in the wheelhouse/advance their career. Just my macro view, but the really obvious problem is that the maritime world simply isn’t adding enough work to accommodate the current talent pool let alone newcomers. Construction is booming because of a historic shortage in labor coupled with industry growth. If the maritime world had any serious growth, at least in the US, my guess is there would be better/more opportunities for all. it’s difficult to look into the future and see where that growth is going to come from, especially new tech/reduction in oil usage. Bureaucracy is a real problem too, and regulation, although well intentioned, is probably doing more harm than good and limiting opportunities…
I don’t care what the BLS statistics say. I care about reality.
How much have insurance costs increased? How much have house prices increased? How much have real estate taxes increased? How much has the price of a good pickup truck increased? How much has the cost of labor for a property owner increased? How about Plumber’s, electricians, painters, roofers, carpenters? How much has quality food increased?
What I know is that all the big items that I spend my wages on have increased in cost tremendously, while my wages have only increased a little. My buying power is greatly diminished.
30 years ago I made big money compared to shoreside jobs, now it’s only a little more.
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I was talking to a friend about this recently. We were recalling a teacher we had at CMA in the 1980s, Captain Cal Burke. A great teacher and mariner. He was great one for telling you exactly what the USMM was like. He made it clear that the ranks of the ABs back then had a lot of people decent society didn’t want ashore, and if you were going to be a MM officer you’d better learn that quick, and get tough. As individuals, he loved sailors, but they were a wild, uneducated group of dangerous misfits, best kept at sea for long periods of time, so as not wreak havoc on polite society.
But in the 21st century, with increased USCG and employer scrutiny of backgrounds; with fear of harassment lawsuits owing to inter-crew issues; with strict no drinking rules, and zero tolerance for race/sex baiting that were once rife aboard ship, the result is that the horde of wild characters we used to hire from is now off-limits. And there are only so many devout Mormons that want go to sea [sarcasm].
Seagoing isn’t a job, it’s a life. Only a certain number of people want to live that monastic life. In the past, a lot of guys chose it over going to jail/dying at 40 from alcoholism. But we can’t hire those guys anymore. At least not here. And to be honest, the quality of the work aboard ship has increased because of it, but that doesn’t make up for the dearth of bodies at times.
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I see your point, This is what I experience from my guys, if they choose to live in Western Washington. Or SF area, for that matter. Which is why a lot move to MT, WY, or AZ. The major metropolitan areas are burgeoning, with housing prices increasing far faster than core inflation. But a lot of people don’t like moving away from friends and family, so as you say, the costs they experience increase faster than core inflation.
The mariners that move to ME, KS, or the south have great incomes compared to the local economies.
I would love it if Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, and all the other tech giants abandoned the greater Seattle area. Not holding my breath.
I think that the quality of tugboat crews has either diminished, or has become a lot older.
There are lots of good young guys, but most are not interested in working on a tugboat, especially if there is limited internet access. There are more problematic young guys than there use to be.
Background checks are a joke. When I ask HR “how did that guy get through a background check,” the response is “we can only afford to be just so fussy if we want to crew the boats.”
When they need someone today, or the guy has a friend in the office, the background check goes out the window.
It’s not uncommon for companies to “forget” to drug test a guy before sending him to the boat.
It is fundamental that wages should be high enough to live decently in the local economy. Local labor in Seattle should not be replaced with low wage labor from Louisiana. The average house in Seattle costs over $800,000. The average boat Captain in Seattle should be paid enough to afford that. The average deckhand in Seattle should be paid enough to afford the average apartment in Seattle.
Calling up references are largely a waste of time. We get very few call backs on those. The former employer is afraid of being sued by the applicant, if they give negative info on him. In WA there’s a law that protects employers against this, but few employers want to test the limits of that law.
At one time, a good “tell” was the type of military discharge the applicant noted on their application. If somone had anything less than “honorable” you looked harder into their background. If they had “dishonorable” you didn’t touch them. If only because anyone stupid enough to note it on an application was too stupid to work at sea. But nowadays we can’t ask the question. A stupid law if there ever was one.
God forbid some stupid law bans criminal background checks.
I think we are headed toward criminal justice reform that restricts the availability of criminal records.
Man, I though captains were getting $$$…I kid, but seriously, the industry is capital intensive…Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. are some of the least regulated, cheapest industries to get into. The maritime industry not only deals with heavy costs, but heavy regulation too, corners are cut where they can be and the labor force, owners have decided, doesn’t need to be paid much/have a lot of skills to still function and get the job done…
I haven’t spent a significant amount of time on tugs, but I will say, as a young motivated guy, I have yet to work with a single person in the industry who is genuinely excited about the future of the industry. There is seemingly no sense of optimism, or hoping that things will/can be improved. I know mariners like to bitch, but everyone from my current captain who has been on tugs for 45yrs on down, it’s hard to find a single person who is in anyway shape or form enthusiastic about the industry and where it is going. Most are around simply for the pay/don’t know anything else. That is a red-flag for me, and it is tough to see a long-term future in the industry because of that. A lot of people in my age group that I have worked with would probably echo that sentiment. It sucks because the work itself is awesome…
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WA state recently toughened up on unemployment thus the surge of applications. I feel the people who told me I was silly for working instead of soaking up the $1400 a week may change their tune soon.
Maritime industry allows you to live away from seaports. I moved to the rural midwest 4 years ago and I’m hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead of my colleagues as a result. It does make shipyards more difficult.
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The key to a healthy, thriving civilization is achieving a fair distribution of resources and wealth. The United States democratic capitalism accomplished this better than most nations for decades. However in the last 40 years there has been a slow shift where corporations invest in capital at the expense of labor. (Trickle down = pissed on). This creates the growth myth of economic strength, where the stock price is the only index factor considered, while the labor that creates it can not afford to participate in these investments. Wages have stagnated for decades, and as for the US Merchant Marine- Unlicensed this has been severe. As a young fisherman, carpenter- labor and then seafarer in the late 1970’s I made double the present minimum wage. It is hard to imagine where the Gen Z orwhatever it is now would desire to come to sea for these wages. There is plenty of money in the highly lucrative subsidized US Merchant Marine for the owners and stock holders, but since the expiration in 1997 of the Merchant Marine Act that guaranteed that the subsidy be shared with crew the majority of the subsidies have floated to the top and the unlicensed mariners have been left with bottom feeder wages. What attracted me to the industry was working hard for long periods of time and then enjoying economic stability like I had never previously enjoyed when I paid off, that is not the case today.
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