Why No One Wants to Be a Seafarer (And Why the World is Scared)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: On this episode of What's Going On With Shipping, seafaring needs you. Hi, I'm your host, Uncle Sal and we need you. That's right, not just you, but at least 113,000 more officers to crew the world merchant fleet by 2030. That was the findings in the report just posted by BIMCO. This is the Baltic International Maritime Council and the International Chamber of Shipping. Every five years, they release this report, Seafarer Workforce Report, Global Supply and Demand for Seafarers. So last one we had was in 2021. Now we have this one released on Day of the Seafarer, June 25th, 2026. And we're going to look at the major findings in this report. If you're new to the channel, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel and hit the bell so you'll learn about new videos as they come out. So the report estimated that 2.57 million seafarers currently serve aboard 85,148 merchant ships. Despite that workforce, the report projects a shortfall of 39,100 what's called STCW certified officers. That's the standards of training, certification, and watchkeeping. That's kind of the international standard needed by maritime officers this year, even as the industry maintains a surplus of 56,890 unlicensed or ratings. All right, let's break this report down for you and discuss what were the major findings. So the global supply of seafarers in 2026 stands at about 2.5 million seafarers, of which a million are officers and 1.5 million are ratings. If we look at the nationalities of these mariners, we can see where they are coming from. So the nation with the largest group of seafarers is the Philippines. This has not changed historically in quite a long time. They dominate both in terms of officers and in terms of ratings. And real quick, just to give you the structure on merchant ships, there's usually three departments on a merchant ship. There's the deck department, there's the engine department, and then there's the steward department. And in each of those departments, you have unlicensed personnel, wipers, able-bodied seamen, stewards, cooks, and then above them, you have officers, chief steward, engineers, deck officers, and then above them all would be the ship's master that comes from the deck department side. But the Philippines has been the largest single group of seafarers for quite a long time. They are followed by India in second place, China, which is rising in terms of the number of seafarers out there. The Russian Federation still remains a big group out there, and then Indonesia. Now, these five groups make up just over half, 56.25% of the global seafaring workforce. Now, this information came from questionnaires submitted to the individual countries. If, however, we look at questionnaires that were submitted to companies, in other words, who are the companies hiring to sail on the ships, we get a little bit of a different number here. Now, these are looking at those seafarers that are STCW certified. So, number one remains the Philippines. Number two, in terms of all seafarers, is Ukraine. Number three is India. Number four is Romania. And then number five is Poland. And if you look at the breakup in terms of officers, that remains fairly consistent, except for that last category, number five, where it's kind of split between the Dutch, the Greek, and the Russians. If you look at ratings, this is a bit different where India and Ukraine kind of flip here. You have Poland in number four, and then an interesting one, Brazil and Indonesia. And one of the things we're starting to see in terms of seafarers out there are seafarers coming from different places. Africa, South America in particularly, are sources for merchant mariners that are rising in number. This has a lot to do with the raising of standards of wages, standard of living, and the wages that are being paid. For example, the average kind of minimum wage pay for mariners out there is roughly around 680 US dollars a month. Now, that is the bare minimum wage that's paid out there. A lot of seafarers make more than that. However, one of the things we are seeing is that shipping companies are looking for cheaper mariners out there. Now, there's no surprise in the gender breakdown. Women are a huge minority when it comes to operating ships and being seafarers. Where you see women the most is in the officer positions. That tends to be the spot that you see them. However, we are seeing a bit of a decrease in the number of female decorated ratings out there. Now, if we look at workforce age profiles, this is really interesting. So when you look at the management level of officers, these are the senior officers, obviously. The largest group of them really sit in between that 31 to 50 year old demographic. That's kind of the sweet spot. When you get down into the operational level, these are your second officers, third officers, second assistant engineers, third assistant engineers. You'll see it drops down a level to 21 to 40 year old. And then when you get into the ratings, the support levels, the sweet spot right there is that 31 to 40 year old with about an equal amount there on the 10 year bracket above them. However, you do see a lot of numbers here for the management level and support level in that really high level 51 to 60 year old. And not unusual. You tend to see older seafarers out there than younger ones. That just seems to be the demographic. There's a big culling that tends to happen in the seafaring industry. A lot of young people want to get into it. They get their feel of it. They get out there and it may not be the life they want, or they get a life ashore and they don't like being away too long. It's kind of what happened to me. I came down with a condition that is the kind of the downfall of many mariners. I got married. And guys, she just could not live without me. That changed by the way. About 10 years in, she was ready for me to go back out to sea. Too late by that time. But that is one of the big issues. Now that is changing a lot because of conditions on ships. Things like Starlink and the ability to communicate almost daily, instantaneously is changing things. It's also creating a problem on board ships because it's isolating the mariners. Interesting report came out too, issues particularly with the younger mariners feeling isolated and alone. Back in the day, everybody would hang out at the end of the day in the lounges. They would get together, tell sea stories, watch movies. That tends not to happen too much now. Instead, what we tend to see is everybody goes to their own cabins, lock themselves up and they just interact during work and meals. Tends to be a big problem. Next, we have the global seafarer demand. Now what we have seen since 2021 is a 14% increase in the world merchant fleet. We're up to 85,148 vessels. Now, while we have talked about things like autonomous vessels and how AI is going to revolutionize shipping, you still need seafarers out on ships. And the global demand stands at 2,547,790 seafarers. About a million officers and about 1.5 million ratings. And when you look at that global demand, we can see how it's increased over the past 10 years. 2015, we're looking at 1.5 million. 2021, 1.9 million. And 2026, 2.5 million. And where we're seeing this demand really grow is in areas like general cargo ships, 21.4%, bulk carriers, 18.9%, and cruise ships at 14%. Those numbers aren't really surprising. General cargo ships tend to have larger crews because of the nature of the cargo you're doing. Bulk carriers are increasing because bulk carriers in general are increasing. That's the largest growing sector in the maritime industry and cruise ships are just absolutely crew dependent. They are crew heavy because of the cargo on board people and they need a lot of services. So that demands a lot for seafarers. The next area deals with training, recruitment, and retention. Now the levels and quality of training have increased for mariners. Shipping gets more sophisticated, more complicated every year. But one of the interesting kind of stats they have here is the ratio of the number of officer cadets versus officers out in the field. So the ratio of officer cadets to qualified officers in 2026 now stands at 1 to 3.8. Now that is up from 1 to 4.8 in 2021 and 1 to 7.6 in 2015. Now when you're recruiting STCW certified officers, the highest level of difficulties in hiring engineering officers and deck officers, that is always the biggest problem you have. And engineering is becoming even more difficult as we adopt these alternative methods of propulsion. So if we look at the estimated supply and demand balance in 2026, the current supply demand situation for the global seafaring workforce is estimated at a shortage of 39,100 officers and a surplus of 56,890 ratings. And if you look at those numbers since 2015, what you see is the fact that officer shortages has increased from 16,500 to where we are today. The rating surplus went down in 2021, but now has come back up. A lot of that has to do with COVID. COVID created a massive problem in getting mariners off ships and back out to their ships. And that has been a bane for overcoming this hurdle. It's also difficult to get young people, especially officers who have training and education to go out to sea. It's getting to be a major difficult problem. Now, if we look at the forecast for the future demand for seafarers, it's not looking great. Again, there is an average annual percent increase of 2% needed for officers. In other words, there needs to be worldwide produce somewhere in the range of 23,000 STCW certified officers. In terms of ratings, it's a little bit less. It's about eight and a half thousand, a 0.5% growth. But again, this is a big challenge. Where are we going to get these officers and ratings for the crew? It doesn't help when you're being shot at, not just by the Iranians, but also by the U.S. out in the Persian Gulf, or by the Russians or Ukrainians in the Black Sea, or by the Houthi in the Red Sea. I mean, it just creates a lot of issues. Lastly, we have this statement from the ICS's Secretary General, Thomas Kazakas. "Seafarers are the backbone of global trade, and this report reinforces just how important they are to keeping the world economy moving, especially in an increasingly fragmented world. As shipping continues to evolve, attracting more people to careers in maritime is essential. We must continue our long-standing efforts to engage with young people early and build a strong pipeline of future talent. Seafarers play a key role in the industry's transition to new fuels and technologies. Ensuring they have access to the training and skills needed for this future will be critical. Without continued investment in both recruitment and training, the workforce gap risks growing at a time when the industry needs skilled seafarers more than ever." So the report concludes with several recommendations. "As the predicted demand for officers will require continued high intakes of STCW certified officers, it is essential that one, maritime education and training careers at sea are promoted with information on transitioning to shore-based roles. One of the issues has always been take this job at sea. What do I do afterwards? What's my exit strategy? What you see is a lot of mariners jump out when they feel like they're either going to have to commit the rest of their life to the career or find an off-ramp. What we need to do is provide a better transition so that seafarers can get out there, they can sail, and know that at the end of a career or end of a period of time, they can transition. It would also be good, I think, and one of the recommendations that's not here, I think we really need to be looking at is how we can pull those seafarers who are sure after a few years back into the career fold. Because I think that is an avenue that needs to be looked at more. Second, level of seafarer recruitment and retention are regularly and closely monitored by maritime administrations to inform the industry and policy makers of the global supply and demand situation of the seafaring workforce." And I think that one is a really important one too. If you look at the case in the United States, we have a federal merchant marine academy. We have six state academies that produce merchant marine officers. We also have a whole slew of smaller academies that produce unlicensed and licensed personnel. We even have maritime high schools throughout the United States. What we need to be doing is centralizing that. The maritime administration in the United States should be the central receiving point to really promote that out among not just individuals, those who want to become seafarers, but also the companies and the potential employers out there. And this is true across the world. When you look at those nations that dominate seafaring, Philippines, China, Indonesia, India, Russia, Ukraine, all those countries have systems in place to help promote their merchant mariners. Philippines is probably the best at doing that. However, seafarers are absolutely crucial. I mean, they are so essential for ensuring that we have enough crew members out there to man that fleet. 85,000 ships, 2.5 million certified seafarers out there, of which probably about 1.8 million at any one time or at sea. Obviously, any shortfall in seafarers could cripple the global supply chain. And one of the things that doesn't get enough attention is the fact that while we focus on attacks in places like the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, issues down in the South China Sea, piracy in the Strait of Malacca and off the coast of Nigeria, and just the normal sailing from point to point, we're really not looking at the psychological and the impact this has on seafarers and what we can do to support them. For many seafarers, understand, they get on a ship, they are on a very strict schedule. Those ships arrive in port as soon as they're throwing their lines to the dock, they're moving cargo. And then as soon as they're moving cargo, they're off the dock and leaving. It's no longer the day where you go ashore and have shore leave in a port for a few days. No time for that. Matter of fact, many ports don't even allow the seafarers off the port because they don't have visas. So they're restricted, if not to the ship, to maybe a certain area on the terminal where there's a recreational area they can go to. But for many mariners, the time you sign on a ship, you don't get off that ship again until you sign off. And depending on the ship and the type of work you're doing, that could be a month on a ship. It could be six months on a ship. Matter of fact, the International Trade Federation says that you can't serve more than 11 months on a ship. And I can tell you that 11 months on the ship is a long frigging time. That was my very first ship I was on for 11 months. That's a long time. You shouldn't be doing that to anyone ever. That is a long to get loopy after a set period of time. You definitely need a bit of rotation and create some stability for seafarers. But this report, I think, is a really important one. It comes out every five years. I would like to see it a little bit more frequently than that. But hats off to the International Chamber of Shipping and BIMCO for getting this report out. I'll have a link to the executive summary of this report along with the report in general. The report is a costly report, I will tell you that. It's about 250 US dollars, 270, 270 US dollars, I think about 200 pounds to get the report. Really interesting report. I highly recommend it. It's always something I look forward to. and be able to analyze. And I will be sifting through that report over the next couple of years using data from it until the next one comes out in 2031. So until that episode, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel, and hit the bell so be alerted about new videos as they come out. Leave a comment, share it across social media, give it a big thumbs up, and if you can, support the page. How do you do that? You hit the super thanks button down below, or head on over to Patreon and become a monthly, yearly subscriber. Until the next episode, or do you sign on to a ship? This is Al, signing off.