No Shipbuilding Revival Happens Without People

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a feature about the urgent need for young people to staff the vessels of the revived U.S. merchant marine, which political leaders are hoping to build. The story began, “Some of America’s best starting salaries are at sea. And they aren’t luring enough workers.”

We celebrate that this issue is getting more mainstream attention, thanks in part to the bipartisan SHIPS Act and some of President Donald Trump’s executive orders. Trump also has signed shipbuilding partnerships with South Korea and Finland to accelerate America’s shipbuilding, while U.S. shipyards recapitalize, expand and recruit.

The SHIPS Act proposes to allocate $100 million annually (FY2026–2035) to the Assistance for Small Shipyards program, broadening it to include “industrial base investments” like equipment upgrades and supply chain enhancements. Many inland shipyards along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and the Gulf and Atlantic Intracoastal Waterways qualify as “small shipyards” under existing criteria. That makes them eligible to access grants for modernizing facilities to build efficient towboats or hybrid-electric vessels. The president’s shipbuilding executive order reinforces this by directing incentives (grants/loans) for shipyard repairs and expansions, with return-on-investment metrics to prioritize high-impact projects.

But nothing happens without new workers in sufficient quantities.

The Wall Street Journal focused on maritime academies like King’s Point, with graduates able to earn six-figure salaries with no college debt right out of school. But the need for workers exists up and down the maritime staffing scale, and for blue water and brown alike. Entry-level jobs on the rivers require no college degree, and they offer great salaries and rewarding advancement opportunities for young people.

We’ve often written about the great work that We Work the Waterways is doing to inform young people about the opportunities for a rewarding life path on the rivers and waterways. We hope all our readers and supporters will continue to help spread the word about those opportunities.

Recruitment is an issue that everyone in the maritime world has long been aware of. Now that the sector seems to be getting the sustained support it needs to expand capacity—and by extension, career-length employment opportunities—recruitment and awareness are more important than ever.