From the Wall Street Journal via MSN, November 29:
Some of America’s best starting salaries are at sea. And they aren’t luring enough workers.
Straight out of college, graduates from the country’s maritime academies can earn more than $200,000 as a commercial sailor, with free food and private accommodations. Commercial sailors travel the world. Coffee breaks come with an ocean view. At night, the sky explodes with stars.
Despite the pay and perks, maritime jobs go begging, and it is raising national-security concerns. America is already short of commercial seafarers for a cargo fleet President Trump wants to see grow. Very little cargo currently moves on American-flagged ships, partly because of staffing. U.S. shipping companies, which are generally required to hire Americans, say they are starved of crews.
The shortage is getting attention. An executive order from President Trump and proposed bipartisan legislation aim to resurrect America’s maritime industry across shipbuilding, ship ownership and shipboard staffing.
The Pentagon depends on commercial sailors and private ocean carriers to move its equipment. The U.S. employs an estimated 10,000 commercial sailors, a number that has fallen sharply over recent decades as America outsourced much of its shipping demands to China and other countries.
For the Navy, which operates only a small number of cargo ships and relies on commercial carriers and mariners for most of its needs, the shortfall could be crippling. The Navy last year mothballed 17 supply ships because there weren’t enough commercial crews to run them. In a conflict, America would likely struggle to position, reinforce and resupply its overseas forces.
“Assuming we can build ships or bring them back under U.S. flag, can we man them sufficiently?” asked retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, a U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduate and former administrator of the Transportation Department’s Maritime Administration. “I don’t think so, not without some significant changes” that boost the number of marine-academy graduates and improve industry job retention, he said.
The U.S. began as a seagoing nation and the merchant marine—its corps of commercial sailors—played a vital role in winning World War II. But slowly over the years, the country’s shipping industry atrophied as U.S. dependence on inexpensive, foreign-made goods came to rely on foreign-operated cargo ships with foreign crews....
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