"Shipbuilding: Train Them, Pay Them, Protect Them
Dire Situation
The U.S. shipbuilding reality is not encouraging. A generation of shipbuilders hired at the tail end of the Cold War to build President Reagan’s 600-ship Navy retired en masse during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their critical technical knowledge and experience left the yards with them. Furthermore, because of the nation’s under-
investment in naval shipbuilding during the peace dividend of the 1990s, the global war on terrorism, and sequestration era, U.S. shipyards did not invest in human capital to fill the gaps left by the retiring Cold War–era shipbuilders.1
Today, these gaps are increasingly filled by Millennial and Gen Z workers, who often step into critical roles after a short apprenticeship and are pushed into management and leadership roles far more quickly than their predecessors. While Cold War–era shipbuilders often spent 5–10 years on the deckplates before getting promoted to foreman, motivated shipbuilders are now being promoted to foreman at the 18–24-month mark to fill gaps.2 These new leaders then must motivate a high-attrition deckplate workforce that lacks corporate knowledge to deliver complex warships to the Navy.
For example, take the advanced weapons elevators on the Gerald R. Ford class. A foreman who completed AWE work in 2016 on board the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) has likely since retired and is unable to help the foreman tasked to complete CVN-79’s AWE now.3 That foreman likely will have been promoted or left the firm by the time the same work on board CVN-80 returns around 2030. With such green leaders, high attrition, and long periodicities between hulls, the shipbuilding workforce simply cannot gain enough experience to improve much collectively.4
The Navy must implement a robust plan that tackles these problems, focusing on shipbuilder pay and promotion reform, a robust training infrastructure to upskill new workers and managers, and an improved shipyard working environment that addresses high attrition. With these problems solved, U.S. shipyards can improve productivity and deliver ships more quickly at closer to expected costs.
Upskill Shipbuilders
The cornerstone of any industrial operation is a cadre of motivated, competent, and experienced crew leaders and foremen. Today’s young shipbuilding foremen are motivated but often lack the years of technical experience and people-management skills their predecessors learned through years of deckplate work. While experience cannot be created out of thin air, a training infrastructure can help close this skills gap and give new leaders the tools and confidence to succeed. Strategically positioning training modules along a career path can give these young leaders time to decompress and learn new skills along their career paths, potentially reducing attrition from burnout.
Fortunately, the Navy has an educational infrastructure capable of building young, competent leaders. The Navy also has a young, high-attrition workforce that thrusts junior sailors and officers into leadership roles. The average age of the active-duty force is 27, and many young sailors and junior officers are put in charge of work centers, fire teams, and divisions only a few years into their service.
To enable this young workforce to operate the largest Navy in the world, a robust network of apprenticeship programs (A Schools), specialized training (C Schools), just-in-time modular courses (F Schools), as well as leadership courses such as the Intermediate Leadership Development Course (for new E-5s) and Division Officer Leadership Course (for new officers) prepare service members for technical and managerial challenges. Later stage modules such as C and F Schools provide hard-charging sailors some time to rejuvenate at the schoolhouse between tough operational assignments.5
The shipyards could adopt a similar model, augmenting existing apprenticeship programs with advanced skills training and modular courses at various career points. If planned correctly, such training modules could be placed at common attrition points and after major project delivery milestones to help reduce burnout and improve shipbuilder retention.
Reward Technical Prowess
In addition to supporting young foremen and crew leaders with tools and training to succeed, shipyards must rethink how they promote and compensate individual shipbuilders. In the current system, individual tradesmen are paid hourly, with pay gradually increasing as they gain tenure and experience. Hourly rates for tradesmen start at around $23 and plateau around $31, which provides an average full-time annual salary of $48,000 to $64,000.
The first major pay raise occurs with a promotion to foreman, when pay increases to around $80,000 annually. Shipbuilders are promoted for managing larger and more complex crews.6 Energetic and competent managers are crucial, but so are experienced deckplate tradesmen who can produce high-quality work and mentor new employees. Shipyards need to build a second career path for tradesmen who want to be master technicians, not managers. The best workers in such a category would be paid and respected similarly to their management colleagues.
Big technology firms such as Microsoft already implement this dual-track career path to develop software engineers. For example, Microsoft typically hires new software development engineers fresh out of school, and they work in junior roles for a few years. Those who want to manage are pushed toward the engineering manager roles and eventually promoted to general manager and vice president roles. Those who love software engineering remain as individual contributors and climb to titles such as principal SDE and distinguished engineer.7 While pay and bonus structures are different between management and engineering roles, both tracks are well respected, and distinguished engineers hold a mythical status like chief warrant officer 5s in the military.8
Shipyards also need bonuses that reward quality work. Currently, hourly employees are paid for shifts, and their pay is not directly tied to the quality of work produced. For example, a pipefitter could work 8 hours at $25/hour and produce a deficient part. The shipyard would not be paid for this work and is responsible for redoing the product (likely paying overtime for someone else to build the part) and paying the original shipbuilder. Without a financial incentive structure for quality work, shipbuilders and crews are less likely to meet quality goals, and shipyards suffer schedule slippage and cost overruns.
A simple cash bonus system that rewards crews for quality work leading to shipyard revenue could be one solution. Currently, shipbuilding work packages are assigned to a certain work unit depending on the complexity and time needed to complete the work. For example, a certain work package might be worth 300 work units, and a crew of six successfully completes it in a month and pass all quality checks. A shipyard could attach a $10 per work unit completion bonus split evenly among the crew. In this example, each shipbuilder would earn a $500 payout at the end of the month, using additional funds to incentivize and reward quality work that improves shipyard revenue and accelerates delivery timelines.
Modern Facilities and Equipment
Shipbuilding is a tough and dangerous business. Day in, day out, flesh battles steel to build the fleet, and most workers inevitably suffer acute or chronic occupational injuries during their careers. While the ships being built are cutting edge, the shipyards and the tools used to do it often are from the early 20th century, and working conditions have not fundamentally improved from those of the 19th-century industrial era.9 Workers deserve better tools and facilities to improve productivity and safety and to make shipbuilding gentler on the body.
Most pressing, shipbuilders need protection from harsh weather conditions and physical loads. By investing in large fabrication facilities and wearable technologies, shipyards could significantly improve the health and safety of their workers. For example, in Newport News Shipbuilding’s Drydock #12 during the summer, wet-bulb globe temperatures regularly stay above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (black-flag conditions) throughout the day. Sailors and Marines stop outdoor training or take precautions in such heat, but shipbuilders continue to chug along and build carriers. During the summer, some shipyards adapt by shifting working hours from 0730–1530 to 0430–1230 so workers can avoid the worst heat; however, they have to break their circadian rhythm to make their new shift hours, which brings its own set of adverse health consequences.10 At the other end of the spectrum, at Bath Iron Works, shipbuilders brave wind-chill temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit during the winter months, fighting off icy conditions, reduced limb dexterity, and the persistent threat of frostbite.
Shipyards can negate these risks by investing in enclosed, climate-controlled buildings, and by upgrading shipyards so every vessel can be built indoors. US submarines already are constructed inside building halls, and the Royal Navy’s destroyer-sized Type 26 and smaller Type 31 frigates are constructed in building halls in Scotland. Meyer Werft (a German commercial shipbuilding company) rapidly builds aircraft carrier–sized cruise ships at indoor shipbuilding facilities in Papenburg.11
The cost of constructing an enclosed building hall to construct two destroyers simultaneously likely would range between $200 and $500 million (applying a multiplier to the 100 mil GBP that BAE Systems spent to build its two-frigate hall in Glasgow). Extrapolating similar construction costs per area, a single carrier-sized building hall could cost between $1 and $2 billion. In addition to reducing climate stress on shipyard workers, enclosed shipbuilding facilities would mean shipyards could add additional shifts (akin to commercial aircraft production) to accelerate production. These facilities also could reduce the risk of adversarial drone espionage and satellite surveillance, which has grown to be a significant and persistent threat at shipyards and naval installations around the world.
which are being piloted in some
U.S. shipyards and already widely
in use by allied shipyards, can
significantly reduce acute
musculoskeletal injuries as well
as chronic overuse injuries.
While expensive, spending
$20–30 million on exoskeletons
is a drop in the bucket compared
to the billions being invested
in facility modernizations and
new shipbuilding orders.
Lockheed Martin
Transformative shipyard investments do not have to be limited to major construction. Shipyards can quickly invest in off-the-shelf apparel and equipment to protect workers against the elements and physical strain. To protect against heat stress, shipyards could distribute fan jackets and neck coolers like those commonly used on Japanese construction sites. A high-end jacket-and-cooler combination typically costs around $300 per person. For colder climates, battery-powered heated jackets could protect shipbuilders from the weather at a similar cost. This personal equipment could improve productivity by nearly 30 percent during the summer season and would be especially effective at yards such as Newport News or Ingalls, where much of the new CVN, LHA, LPD, and DDG construction occurs outdoors.12
At a higher price point of $3,000 per unit, shipyards could invest in tool-carrying exoskeletons that significantly reduce acute musculoskeletal and chronic overuse injuries.13 Equipping everyone in a yard of 10,000 shipbuilders with climate safety equipment and up to 5,000 exoskeletons would cost between $20 and $30 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the billions being invested in large-scale facility modernizations and new shipbuilding orders.14 The Navy just needs to implement tools and solutions that already are being used by allied shipbuilders and leading commercial firms.
Billions of dollars have already been committed with bipartisan political support to rebuild the U.S. maritime industrial base. People, not money, will rebuild this industry, and it is time to rethink how the nation trains, compensates, and equips them. With a training infrastructure modeled after the Navy’s, a dual-track career path that rewards deckplate work as well as management, and large investments in facilities and safety equipment, the United States can revitalize its shipbuilding workforce and realize a significant improvement in shipbuilding quality and output.
1. Luke A. Nicastro, Congressional Research Service, Navy Ford (CVN-78)
Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2023),
www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47751.
2. Compressed deckplate promotion timelines based on author interviews with
shipbuilders.
3. Mallory Shelbourne, “Carrier John F. Kennedy Delivery Delayed 2 Years;
Fleet Will Drop to 10 Carriers for 1 Year,” USNI News, 7 July 2025.
4. Sam LaGrone, “HII Stepping Away from Hiring Green Shipbuilders; Focus
Now on Paying for Experience,” USNI News, 2 April 2025.
5. Naval Air Station Pensacola, “Navy Leader Development Framework” (Pensacola,
FL: Commander, Navy Region Southeast, n.d.), cnrse.cnic.navy.mil/Portals/83/nas_pensacola/Documents/NLDF_Final.pdf.
6. Anecdotal evidence gathered from conversations with current shipbuilders.
7. Microsoft, “The SDE Career Path at Microsoft,” Microsoft Tech Community Blog,
24 March 2024.
8. Levels.fyi, “Microsoft Software Engineer Salaries,” www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software-engineer?country=254.
9. Max Maxfield, Naval Sea Systems Command, “Head of Navy’s SIOP Effort Says
Upgrading Nation’s Shipyards for the Future Will Take Decades,” NAVSEA News,
22 May 2024.
10. John Howard, “Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses—United States,
2014,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 64, no. 41 (2015): 1141–46.
11. “Meyer Werft: Home of the World’s Largest Roofed Construction Dock,”
The Shipyard Blog, 7 May 2020.
12. Independent analysis. Loss productivity model can be provided on request.
13. L. Casey Chosewood and Ninica Howard, “Exoskeletons in Construction:
Will They Reduce or Create Hazards?” NIOSH Science Blog, 3 February 2022.
14. Hilti, “Construction Exoskeletons,” www.hilti.com/c/CLS_health_safety/cls_construction_exoskeletons.
BIOGRAPHY OF LT GARY KIMeutenant Gary Kim, U.S. Navy Reserve
