I have been running a tugboat company for a few years now and there is definitely a labor shortage. Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted. The very fastest we could theoretically turn an unlicensed deckhand into a licensed captain is three years of sea time. We are experiencing a shortage of labor.
At the end of the day, industries are principally responsible for the health of their workforce overall. If there is a shortage, it is a failure of leadership.
That is why “labor shortage” is such a mealy-mouthed term. It treats labor as external to the process, something someone else is supposed to “provide”
It is not just pay rate. Where I can match pay rates, I cannot match lifestyle. U.S. citizens and green card holders have more attractive jobs available to them that do not require being away from family for weeks at a time. (e.g., software development)
Acceptance of that lifestyle is partially contingent on the pay. I am sure that plenty of people would be willing to spend long stretches away from home at work if they were being paid $1m.
That's exactly the point everyone is trying to make to you. That ultimately most labor shortages, unless caused by extremely rapid change in conditions (such as a law being introduced with only weeks notice that dramatically changes the regulatory landscape with no time to adapt) are usually pay shortages.
Labor shortage has long been used as a weasel phrase to imply that it's the fault of the workers/labor that companies can't fill positions. That's what the pushback is on. If your business can't find enough workers, you or your industry aren't offering enough financial incentive to have people work for you. You need to offer more money. And if you can't because it's not financially viable? Well...seems the free market has spoken and said that your business is not viable anymore. As the kids say these days, 'sucks to suck'.
There are many funded projects not executing for lack of captains today. The captains I manage to hire leave other companies wanting. How is that not a shortage?
I agree that this shortage could have been avoided.
Perhaps those projects are just not viable economically, because they can't pay enough to attract the captains. Or, the owners are too rigid to pay (for example) $500k salary to a captain.
That is still a shortage. There is a finite number of licensed captains with Master of Towing endorsement who are legally allowed to work on U.S. flag vessels. You cannot make a new licensed captain with just money. It takes time.
I completely agree that shortages can be fixed with good planning, which industry and the U.S. government did not do.
I also completely agree that when using unskilled labor, one can just apply more money to attract labor. Skilled labor requires more than money to acquire.
If you don’t mind sharing. How did you find yourself in a second career as the owner/operator of a tugboat company?
There are no particular education requirements for writing software. Some of the best developers have no formal education in the field.
Pay is short for “pay to quality of life at work ratio”.
If alternatives with better pay to QoL ratios become available, the then either a business can increase the pay to QoL ratio, or it may no longer be viable.
I think it would be helpful to this discussion if you were to add "for the amount that I am paying them" to the end of that sentence. Then, you would be addressing the point.
$100K for a desk job is comparable to $300K on a boat
If the captain works 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off it's probably more like $150K for a desk job
Pay people at all levels a minimum of $5000 for each week away at sea, then they might do 4 months of work (which includes free board but is essentially a 24hr job) and 8 months of other things they enjoy while still living a near middle-class life.
Still having a hard time finding people? Give them more comfortable beds. Get an on-board chef. Ensure they have starlink access when they're not on active duty. Give them appropriate bonuses, dental, medical, RRSP matching
I'd be very surprised if you don't find a number of people eager to do this if their compensation is good enough.
Sure, if 80% of your workforce is only on deck 3-4 months out of the year then of course you have to hire more people too, but you'll find those people. You'll be flooded with people who want to do this. Maybe my calculus is off? Maybe you need to pay $6000/week? $10000/week? I guarantee you there is a salary incentive where people won't refuse. People will leave software engineering jobs to go work on a boat 3 months out of a year (I would at around $7000/week). Doctors will quit, etc.
When people say better pay won't solve the "shortage", I wonder how they so deeply misunderstood free market economics.
"most young candidates" don't want to be slaving away at a factory for most of their life either. They want to be able to buy a house. Maybe even 4 months of rent relief will massively change their lives. Maybe they want to buy a house one day or be able to responsibly have a kid.
There's not a labor shortage, there are just industries that don't pay enough
This is not exactly true. It's not at all true when talking about training, because paying people is what motivates them to take the risk of paying for their own training (and if you're training people yourself, you don't require trained people.) Experience is created by paying people enough not to leave the profession.
> Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted.
Why weren't people trying to become tugboat captains for the past X years? Is it because the job paid too much?
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edit: I think you could say this is a collective action problem; nobody is willing to raise pay because it will make them uncompetitive against those who don't, but if they all raised pay they would all make more money and be more secure in the future. It's the kind of thing where an active government would step in and manage hiring and/or dictate pay. Instead, since our politicians are only concerned with what individuals are willing to pay them to do, they get lobbied to weaken labor regulations and immigration laws.
There are lots of unemployed black people desperate for work if one wants to fill up tugboats and construction sites. Just tell them where to show up.
Right now, there is a shortage. If there is a shortage of hammers, one cannot just claim that the shortage does not exist because we can eventually make more hammers.
> Why weren't people trying to become tugboat captains for the past X years? Is it because the job paid too much?
The recent rollout of USCG Subchapter M has created significant demand while not increasing the available supply. I agree that industry and government should have realized this would happen.
Think of it this way, gold has a high price, so I only use it in valuable ways, I don’t gold plate my house. If gold was significantly cheaper maybe I would, is there a shortage? Clearly there is a shortage at the price I would pay to gold plate my house. But I am fine using it for jewelry, no shortage at that price.
Your hammer example is the same, there are insufficient hammers at a certain price. Raising price will decrease demand and eliminate the shortage. This increase makes its way through the supply chain increasing prices along the way until demand goes down.
Of course this semantic argument is pointless because what people really want is access to the products they are accustomed to at a price they are accustomed to.
edit to add: This whole thread now feels like defense of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. We have an entire industry facing a stricter regulatory framework that increased demand for captains while fewer humans are being born in the U.S. This is a shortage.
I get that one can just increase wages and immediately get more cashiers or burger flippers. Other problems have more complicated dependencies.
edit more to add: I realize now I did not fully appreciating your argument, which is that there is never a shortage of anything?
Right now, captains with Master of Towing endorsement are getting $800-$1,200 per day, depending on the region and type of work.
Deckhands on a track to become captains are getting $300-$500 per day. I would pay more for the right candidates.
I bet you could bring captains out of retirement at the eight price. You're just not there (yet).
Not every job is like a desk job where we can just add more money and get more COBOL programmers back out of retirement.
Plus offering unlimited, all expenses paid, legal support on top would get hundreds of tugboat captains from other countries to emigrate.
And the same could also apply for other licensed captains to switch to tugboats, the procedures aren't so complicated as to make a determined effort impossible.
Voila, shortage resolved in under 3 years.
I never argued that the shortage cannot be fixed. I argued against the claim that there is no shortage. Some shortages require more than just paying more money.
That's where things start to go wrong - because it may be that some industry is in decline because it's being eclipsed by something else entirely, and artificially propping up that industry causes a market distortion that results in lower efficiency. The free market can still sort it out - ultimately as supply goes down, either prices will rise, or we'll find that there is insufficient demand because buyers far away in the supply chain are finding another, more efficient way.
I agree though that "labour shortage" is partly a misnomer. It's more accurately described as a market labour upwards price adjustment in progress!
Airlines are paying more and more for captains, but it's not solving the shortage. They're just poaching them from each other, the total vacancies stays the same.
So I think with airlines, it is still very much a case of a pay shortage.
Regional pilots, where you do your time if you didn’t join the military, get paid absolute peanuts. You’re looking at a career that pays well under average for most of your younger years, for very skilled labor, then tops out at about the pay of a mid-level software engineer. And you have a terrible schedule and are on call pretty much all the time, so good luck with a family. Oh and if you screw up, you get a mark on your record you have to justify at every interview for the rest of your career—if you’re lucky and nobody died. Not to mention all the layoffs over the years, where you have to keep current when nobody is hiring.
Changing jobs as a pilot sets you back to square one with seniority and pay. There's no way to change companies and get raises - like one can do as a software developer.
Airlines have also laid off pilots during several industry downturns since 2001. Every time that happens, some switch careers and never return to flying.
Know a few former Naval Aviators who hit their 8-10 year commit and decided to get a Masters in something not aviation related -- work-life balance was a definite draw.
Why make that kind of investment and take that risk and spend your 20s with a shit quality of life if you have better options?
I was trained as a unlimited Third Mate (Any Oceans, Any Gross tons), but decided not to sit for license and became an engineer instead. Every so often I wonder if I made the right choice, esp. since some of my classmates now own or are running shipping companies.
I worked at Microsoft a few decades ago, and just sort of assumed that virtually everyone was there so that they could do their own start up. I was sorely wrong, and only one other than myself did so.
It may be industry dependent in a similar fashion to how many truckers are (used to be?) often owner-operators. You realize that you can only make so much money working for someone else and after a while the lifestyle gets tiring. Hard to settle down when you're away for 6 months out of the year. Or at some point you realize that your odds of being seriously injured at sea are going to catch up to you and you see an opportunity to buy a couple of harbor tugs or the like while managing them shoreside, and go for it.
I honestly never thought about it until you brought that up, but it could be personality types. When my High School History teacher heard that I was going to nautical school, she thought it would be a good fit for me since I was a loner and sailors were basically "cowboys who went to sea instead" in her words. And she understood me very well.
I really don't know the reason but it certainly merits thinking about. Especially since I've had some kind of side-hustle/consulting/business venture during every job I've ever had.
> Although the Coast Guard released Subchapter M on July 20, 2016, vessels had two years to meet the majority of the requirements — the deadline falling on July 20, 2018. The Coast Guard is trying to work with the tug and towing companies to make for a smooth transition into the new regulations with minimal downtime. The entirety of the law will be phased in over a six-year period.
> The next deadline for obtaining a certificate of inspection (COI) is in 2019. By July 22nd, 25 percent of towing and tugboat companies’ vessels must have a COI onboard. The percentage increases by 25 percent each year after until all vessels in the fleet have their COI onboard.
I have done quite a lot to entice potential captains to join us over the last 3 years. Very few potential candidates are excited about the lifestyle, especially during the time when ZIRP was funding companies doing nothing.
But you did need them, as evidenced by the fact that now you're having trouble finding captains. You needed them then so they could be trained to be captains now. Yeah, training and growing people is an investment. Yeah, it doesn't always pay off. But you don't get to complain when you didn't invest that you didn't reap the rewards of your nonexistent investment.
> I have done quite a lot to entice potential captains to join us over the last 3 years. Very few potential candidates are excited about the lifestyle, especially during the time when ZIRP was funding companies doing nothing.
And as some others have asked you, what are you offering a starting deckhand? Give us at least a range for pay.
I have been running the company for three years. Yes, my predecessor could have invested more earlier. All of the tugboat companies in our cohort could have invested more earlier. They could have raised prices so that they could attract more people. I agree that the industry and the government made bad choices in the past that lead to a shortage now.
The path from deckhand to licensed captain requires seatime. We have a fleet of four tugs. Even if we had been able to invest in the deckhands, where would we have put them? Each tug has a finite number of men it can carry, limited by physical space, supplies, and regulation.
I answered about pay rate elsewhere in the thread. I will try to add more details about the various labor categories.
No, that will never work. But I bet you will be successful in some field where patience is a virtue.
A lack of prescience is not unique to tugboats.
Maybe, but...
> They require more training and experience.
Well, sure, those have more lag (all market signals in the real, non-ideal, world have some), and to cut through noise and make sure the signal gets to the labor force, you may need to pay for the training and the work that provides the experience, as well as the target job itself.
> Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted
Dying you can't avoid, but sufficient pay can affect the choice to retire. So, to the extent voluntary retirement is an issue, that suggests pay is also an issue.
If not inflation-adjusted, possibly in compared-to-best-alternative terms.
A friend of mine moved from construction to working on a tugboat ~1.5 years ago and I spent a bunch of time talking about it this winter. Some parts of the business sound interesting but I'm not sure it is a good fit due to family health and relationships.
Sometimes they’re tough.
One example : Software engineers often get the "Work From Home" perk. Not sure if the industry offers software to remotely operate a tugboat, similar to a drone operator ? If it didn't exist, what if you developed such software ?
As for remote control, no, this will be one of the last industries to allow remote control. In port and at many points during the voyage, captain and crew make quick decisions that require situational awareness. The deckhands have to wrangle lines and physically interact with the tow.
Also paying people who are good at training extra money would be good. They are creating competition for themselves later on.
There's a shortage of people willing to put up with being treated like shit and not even being paid hazard pay for dealing with management.
And then there's the habit of trying to keep the absolute bare minimum of employees in order to boost quarterly profits, which means there's no float of extra people you can poach if you get a giant project landing in your lap. It's Prisoner's Dilemma and everyone has been defecting since the 1970's.
I am replying to the assertions that there is no such thing as a labor shortage. It takes years of seatime to become a licensed captain. It takes more than money to make one. Our tugboats have berths for 4-6 crew. There are physical and regulatory limits on how many deckhands can be in the pipeline to becoming captains.
The regulations on how many "trainees" can exist at any one time is an interesting point of contention. Honestly, sorry I commented if that's the hold back for you guys.
I still struggle to imagine there is any job a six digit (or local comparative equivalent) salary with a fully paid training won't spur an abundance of candidates for. If your career is one, I'm sorry I so confidently doubted you
The process is that one generally comes on as an uncredentialed deckhand or mechanic and accrues necessary seatime, then takes courses and passes tests. One must pass an annual physical and be subject to random drug tests. The deckhand must be able to get a TWIC card and a passport if doing anything international. Candidates with previous problems with DUIs, child support, etc. have trouble with this. Then you have to be willing to live in cramped quarters with 3-5 other men 24 hours a day. All of these requirements cut down the pool of likely candidates.
One has to work at this job for a few years to be able to have accrued the seatime and learn on the job and take some courses and then take a test.
So even if I could pay a deckhand $500k per year, that doesn't fix the problem we have today. That deckhand will not be a captain for years.
And most deckhands don't have the aptitude to become captains.
You don't have to take my word for it. You could talk to anybody in the industry.
See, e.g.,: https://www.google.com/search?q=tugboat+labor+shortage
Of course, some people take more precautions than others, and that helps, but it's no guarantee of safety.
There are proper postures to do a lot of activities and they are frequently not observed. Maintaining proper posture is a skill that must be trained until you don't have to think about it. Even something "mindlessly simple" like lifting a heavy object off the ground and carrying it somewhere requires proper posture and technique to reduce chance of injuries. Reduce, not eliminate. You can do everything right and still get injured.
When lifting things off the ground, most people will flex and extend the torso instead of using their much stronger leg muscles. The better form is to squat down by flexing the thighs, pick up the object then lift it up by extending the thighs, all while maintaining the spine aligned.
Physical education and conditioning is important in these jobs. In our every day lives.
So there are ways to do physical labor that do not harm you, but a lot of these come down to management and are not up to the individual employee. You could definitely hurt yourself very badly if you do it wrong (which you won't generally do naturally -- our bodies give us lots of warnings -- but pressure from above can make you ignore those warnings and drastically shorten your working life).
Fortunately, the company where I did labor really tried to be a healthy place to work, and that made such a huge difference. A lot of my coworkers had been there for 30 years or more, and they were still zipping around like they were 20.
These are some things that really help:
- The work needs to not be too repetitive (you need to switch tasks several times a day, and each task needs to use different parts of your body).
- You need breaks. And not just at set times of day, but also just whenever you need it. If you do something to yourself that feels funny or not quite right (a warning sign that you are on the verge of a sprain or some other injury), you need to be able to stop working immediately until the feeling passes.
- You need to do work that is within your capability. It's OK to work extremely hard, to go home exhausted, and to feel muscle soreness the next day. But if you do something you're not strong enough or quick enough to handle with total control, you are likely to make mistakes that lead to injuries (tripping, dropping something, using poor form, etc.). Such injuries can be severe and lifelong, so you should absolutely never work at the edge of your ability.
- You need to be well-slept and well-hydrated (cold water and electrolytes should be available at all times, with absolutely no delay), and you must have appropriate clothing and a way to temporarily escape from the heat if you suddenly feel faint. You can work extremely hard under surprisingly harsh conditions (I did hard labor in humid, 100-110 F greenhouses day after day and felt great), so long as your body's basic needs are met.
This is one of several root causes behind our national opioid addiction epidemic. While pharmaceutical companies and doctors bear much of the blame, there are millions of people who suffer chronic pain from work injuries that can't be fully repaired.
Some have messed up back & knees... others don't. The big difference between the groups is their level of activity outside of the job and their fitness level; the guys who work out, and have worked out for decades, and are active outside their job are all in good health... no back problems, no knee problems, no shoulder problems, etc. Some of these guys are in their 60's now and retired.
I'm not judging... just saying it is possible to work a heavy labor job and not screw up your body.
What about during WWII in the United States? A large number of people had to leave their jobs because they were drafted for the war.