Jones Act Salary Benchmarking: Setting Crew Pay That Holds
A tug operator loses two captains in a quarter to a competitor forty miles away. The exit interviews mention schedule and management, because departing employees rarely lead with money. Six months later the same operator raises pay across the board by eight percent, having never established what the competitor was actually paying or whether eight percent closed the gap. That is compensation by anecdote, and it is expensive in both directions.
Jones Act salary benchmarking replaces the anecdote with evidence. Done properly, it tells a marine CFO what a specific rank on a specific vessel type in a specific region actually earns, expressed in terms that let you compare your package against a competitor's. Done badly, it produces a spreadsheet of national averages that describes nobody's crew and defends no decision.
This article covers why mariner pay behaves differently from shoreside pay, how to match jobs before comparing numbers, how to normalise for rotation (the step most exercises skip), where usable data actually comes from, and how to turn the output into a budget your finance team will approve.
Why Jones Act Crew Pay Behaves Differently From Shoreside Pay
The Jones Act, Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires that vessels moving cargo between US points are US-built, US-flagged, US-owned and US-crewed. That last requirement is what makes compensation planning unusual.
In most industries, a labour shortage eventually resolves through immigration, offshoring or automation. None of those routes is available here. Licensed officers on US-flag vessels must be US citizens, and unlicensed crew must be at least 75 percent citizens or lawful permanent residents. The supply of qualified people is fixed by domestic credentialing capacity, and it responds slowly to price.
The consequence is a closed, highly transparent market. Mariners in a given trade often know each other, sail together over careers, and compare packages in detail during crew changes. A pay adjustment at one operator becomes known to competitors within weeks. Wage information moves faster in the wheelhouse than in any published survey.
Scale reinforces this. Industry bodies put the domestic maritime fleet at roughly 40,000 vessels supporting around 650,000 jobs and approximately $154 billion in annual economic output. But the licensed population operating them is small: Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2024 records about 3,490 ship engineers and 13,570 captains, mates and pilots employed within the water transportation industry. Losing four experienced captains is not a rounding error in that population. It is a meaningful share of the people qualified to run your specific vessel type in your specific region.
Two further features distinguish this market. Compensation is structured around rotations rather than annual salaries, which makes packages genuinely hard to compare. And a large share of the workforce sits under collective bargaining agreements, which publish wage scales and create visible reference points that non-union operators are measured against whether they like it or not.
There is also a timing problem specific to rotational work. A shoreside employee who feels underpaid can start interviewing on a Tuesday evening. A mariner on a 28 day hitch does the comparison aboard, talks it through with the relieving crew, and acts during leave. That means dissatisfaction accumulates invisibly for weeks and then converts into resignations in clusters, often after crew changes. Operators frequently interpret those clusters as a sudden cultural problem when they reflect a pay gap that has been discussed on the vessel for a month.
The practical implication is that pay problems surface late and resolve slowly. By the time two captains resign, the conversation that produced those resignations has already reached the rest of the crew. Benchmarking before that point is considerably cheaper than reacting after it.
What Jones Act Salary Benchmarking Actually Involves
Benchmarking is not looking up an average. It is a structured comparison of your compensation against a defined competitive set, for defined roles, expressed in a common unit.
A complete exercise answers five questions:
Who do we actually compete with for these people? Not the industry at large. The operators your crew leave for and arrive from, in your region and trade.
What are we paying now, fully loaded? Base wage, overtime treatment, per diem, travel, bonuses, retirement contributions, medical coverage and paid leave, converted into an annual figure.
What does the market pay for the same work? Same rank, same credential level, same vessel type, same rotation, same region.
Where do we sit against the market? Expressed as a percentile, by rank, not as a single company-wide statement.
What would it cost to move, and what does not moving cost? The trade-off between a pay increase and continued turnover, quantified.
The output should be usable by two audiences at once. A crewing manager needs a defensible number to offer a candidate this week. A CFO needs to understand what a two-dollar-an-hour move does to vessel operating cost per day across the fleet, and what the alternative costs in vacancy and turnover.
Job Matching Comes Before Any Numbers
Most benchmarking failures happen at this stage, and no amount of statistical work later can repair them.
Match the credential, not the title
Job titles vary wildly between operators. "Captain" covers a 100 ton master on a crew boat and an unlimited master on an ATB. The credential is the honest comparison point: endorsement grade, tonnage or horsepower limits, route restrictions and any additional certifications such as DP grade or tankerman PIC status.
Two positions with identical titles and different endorsement requirements are not comparable, because the populations qualified to fill them are different sizes. That difference in scarcity is precisely what drives the pay gap you are trying to measure.
Match the trade and vessel type
Inland towing, harbour assist, offshore supply, ATB petroleum, deep sea liner and passenger operations all pay differently for nominally similar ranks. Trade determines schedule, risk, cargo complexity and customer requirements, and each of those shows up in compensation.
Regional differences are equally real. BLS data has consistently shown Louisiana and Texas among the highest-paying states for captains, mates and pilots, reflecting the concentration of offshore and inland demand along the Gulf. Benchmarking a Gulf Coast operation against a national mean will understate the market every time.
Match the scope of responsibility
Two chief engineers on similarly sized vessels can hold very different jobs. One runs a modern vessel with shoreside technical support and a full engine crew. Another runs an older vessel, orders parts, manages contractors during yard periods and sails with one assistant. Scope belongs in the match, and a benchmarking exercise that ignores it will misprice both roles.
Normalising for Rotation, the Step Most Exercises Skip
This is where benchmarking earns its value, and where most internal attempts break down.
Vessel crew compensation comes in incompatible units. Some operators pay a day rate for days worked. Others pay an annual salary regardless of rotation. Some pay hourly with overtime after a threshold. Rotations vary: 14 and 14, 21 and 21, 28 and 28, 28 and 14, or seasonal schedules on inland runs. Comparing a day rate to a salary without conversion tells you nothing.
The normalisation method is straightforward. Convert everything to annual total cash for a full year of the actual rotation worked.
Work an example. Operator A pays a chief engineer $1,000 per day, worked days only, on 28 and 28. That is roughly 182 working days, or about $182,000, with no paid leave and limited benefits. Operator B pays $175,000 annually on the same rotation, year round, plus a retirement contribution worth $9,000 and medical coverage the mariner would otherwise buy. Operator B is ahead once benefits are counted, though Operator A's headline number is larger.
Now change the rotation. If Operator A runs 28 and 14, the mariner works roughly 243 days and earns about $243,000, but is home half as much. The comparison is no longer about money alone, and candidates weigh it accordingly.
Four elements belong in every normalised figure:
Days actually worked under the real rotation, including any expected extensions
Overtime treatment, since a day rate that absorbs unlimited hours differs materially from one that pays beyond a threshold
Travel and per diem, which represent real value where the employer arranges and pays for travel to the vessel
Benefits value, particularly medical coverage and retirement contributions, which vary enormously between union and non-union operators
Present the result as annual total value alongside time away from home. Mariners make decisions on that pair of numbers, so benchmark on them.
Where Reliable Mariner Salary Data Comes From
No single source is sufficient. Each has a specific use and a specific blind spot.
Federal wage statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes occupational wage data covering ship engineers, captains, mates and pilots, and sailors and marine oilers, with national and state-level detail. For 2024, within the water transportation industry, ship engineers recorded a median around $107,670 and a mean near $114,800, while captains, mates and pilots recorded a median near $99,800.
Strengths: free, methodologically consistent, geographically detailed and credible with finance teams and boards. Limitations: the categories are broad, aggregating vessel types and rotations that pay very differently, and the data lags. Use BLS to establish the floor and the geographic pattern, not to price a specific seat.
Collective bargaining agreements
Union wage scales are published, detailed and updated on known schedules. They specify rates by rank, vessel class and often by contract, along with benefit contributions.
Strengths: precise, current and directly comparable. Limitations: they describe union operators specifically. Non-union operators still need to know them, since union scales set expectations across the market and mariners move between sectors.
Your own hiring data
The most underused source sits inside your own records. Declined offers, accepted offers, counteroffers your crew received, and resignation destinations tell you exactly where the market is, in real time, for exactly your roles.
Build the habit of recording three things: the package offered, the package the candidate accepted elsewhere where they will share it, and where departing crew went. Twenty data points collected over a year are worth more than any national average for pricing your next offer.
Commissioned benchmarking studies
A structured study, whether run internally or through a specialist, gathers current market data for a defined peer set and set of roles, normalised for rotation.
Strengths: matched to your actual competitive set and current. Limitations: cost, and quality depends entirely on the peer group definition and the rigour of the job matching. A study comparing you to the wrong operators produces confident numbers pointing in the wrong direction.
A practical approach uses all four. Federal data establishes the frame, union scales set reference points, internal hiring data provides real-time signal, and a commissioned study fills the gaps for the ranks that matter most.
Building the Benchmark: A Working Method
The following sequence produces something usable within a few weeks.
Step one: define the roles that matter. Do not benchmark everything. Prioritise the ranks where turnover hurts most or vacancies persist longest, usually chief engineer, master, chief mate and first assistant engineer, plus any rank with a current retention problem.
Step two: define the competitive set. List the operators your crew actually move between. Ten to fifteen named companies in your trade and region beats an abstract industry definition. Departure and arrival records will build this list for you.
Step three: document your current position fully. For each role, calculate annual total value including all benefits, under the real rotation. Include the range across incumbents, not just the average, because internal spread often reveals problems on its own.
Step four: gather market data from all four sources. Record the rotation, vessel type and region attached to every data point. A number without that context is unusable.
Step five: normalise everything to annual total value. Same rotation basis, benefits included, expressed per year.
Step six: position each role against the market. Use percentiles. Sitting at the 40th percentile for chief engineers and the 70th for ABs is a specific, actionable finding. "We are slightly below market" is not.
Step seven: decide a target position by rank, not company-wide. Scarce and business-critical ranks may warrant the 65th to 75th percentile. Ranks with reliable supply may sit at the median. Deliberately choosing different targets for different ranks is sound compensation practice, and it costs less than moving everyone.
Step eight: build ranges rather than points. A minimum, midpoint and maximum for each role gives crewing managers room to reflect experience and performance without renegotiating policy for every hire.
Step nine: set a review cadence. Annual review as a minimum, with a mid-year check on any rank showing turnover or failed searches. Benchmarks age quickly in tight markets.
A note on unlicensed ranks. Operators often benchmark officers carefully and treat ABs, QMEDs, tankermen and cooks as an afterthought, which is a mistake for two reasons. Unlicensed positions are where most turnover volume sits, so small gaps multiply across many people. And these ranks compete directly with shoreside industrial employers rather than only with other vessel operators, which means the relevant comparison set is wider. A tankerman weighing a plant maintenance job is comparing your rotation and pay against a schedule that includes going home every night.
Internal spread deserves attention at this stage too. Run the range across incumbents in each rank before looking outward. Where long-serving crew sit below recent hires, which happens whenever market rates move faster than internal increases, you have a retention problem that external benchmarking alone will not surface. Compression of that kind tends to become visible to the crew eventually, and it is better to find it yourself.
Turning Benchmark Data Into a Defensible Budget
Benchmarking that ends in a report changes nothing. The output has to survive a conversation with finance.
Frame the cost correctly. A wage increase for a rotational position costs more than the raise itself, because the rotation requires roughly 1.5 to 2 people per seat depending on the schedule. Present the fleet-wide annual cost and the effect on vessel operating cost per day, since that is the figure marine CFOs actually manage.
Then quantify the alternative, which most operators never do. The cost of losing a chief engineer includes recruitment fees or internal recruiting time, travel and relocation, familiarisation time during which productivity is lower, overtime or superintendent cover during the gap, and the operational risk of an unfamiliar officer on a known vessel. Add the possibility of a delayed sailing or a missed crew change, and the figure frequently exceeds the annual cost of the raise that would have prevented the departure.
Present three options rather than one recommendation: hold current pay and accept a modelled turnover rate, move to market median, or move to a chosen percentile above median for critical ranks only. Attach costs and expected retention effects to each. Finance teams approve choices more readily than they approve requests.
Two further arguments carry weight. First, targeted increases for scarce ranks cost far less than across-the-board adjustments and address the actual problem. Second, pay is only one lever. Rotation predictability, travel arrangements, connectivity aboard and honoured crew change dates all affect retention, and some cost less than a wage increase. A benchmarking exercise that surfaces both is more useful than one that recommends only money.
Implementation deserves as much thought as the analysis. Phasing an adjustment over two cycles reduces the immediate budget impact, but it also delays the retention benefit, and crew who hear that a raise is coming in six months may leave in three. Where the gap is large enough to be driving departures, moving once and fully is usually the better commercial decision.
Communication matters equally. Mariners who receive an increase without explanation assume it was overdue rather than deliberate. Explaining that the company benchmarked against named competitors, found a gap at specific ranks and closed it converts the same money into a retention message. It also sets an expectation that pay is reviewed on a schedule, which reduces the number of individual negotiations a crewing manager handles at each crew change.
Market Conditions Shaping Jones Act Crew Wages in 2026
Several current factors belong in any pay plan being built this year.
Officer scarcity is structural. The BIMCO and International Chamber of Shipping Seafarer Workforce Report 2026 estimates a global shortfall of 39,100 STCW certified officers alongside a surplus of ratings. The domestic picture mirrors it: BLS projects water transportation employment growing about 1 percent through 2034 while roughly 9,500 openings arise annually, mostly from people leaving the occupation.
Retention pressure is real and measurable. A 2026 World Maritime University study, drawing on responses from 4,372 seafarers across 99 nationalities, found around half intending to leave the profession within five years, citing long hours, limited rest and shore leave, and work-related stress. Pay alone does not solve that, but underpaying accelerates it.
Credentialing constraints limit supply response. Coast Guard credential processing was disrupted by the 2026 funding lapse and has been recovering through the year, with published timelines improving but still longer than historical norms. Higher wages cannot conjure credentialed mariners when the credential itself takes months to obtain.
Policy uncertainty affects the demand side. A broad Jones Act waiver issued in March 2026 permitted foreign-flagged vessels to carry specified energy and agricultural cargoes between US ports, and it has been extended twice, most recently through mid-November 2026, with a revised approval process taking effect in August. The waiver is genuinely contested: supporters frame it as a national defence measure addressing supply disruption, while domestic operators, maritime unions and several members of Congress argue it exceeds the statutory standard and displaces US-crewed tonnage. For compensation planning, the practical point is not who is right but that domestic freight demand carries more uncertainty than usual this year. Operators building multi-year wage commitments should stress-test them against a softer demand scenario, while recognising that crew lost during a soft period are difficult to recover when volumes return.
Benchmarking Mistakes That Produce Bad Decisions
Comparing headline rates instead of annual total value. A day rate and a salary are different instruments. Comparing them directly misleads in both directions.
Using national averages for a regional operation. Gulf Coast pay for licensed officers sits well above the national mean. Benchmarking against the mean guarantees you look competitive on paper while losing people.
Benchmarking by job title. Titles are not standardised. Credentials are.
Running the exercise once. A benchmark from three years ago is a historical document. Markets that move this fast require annual refresh at minimum.
Ignoring internal equity. External benchmarking that creates large gaps between similar internal roles generates its own turnover. Check the internal picture before implementing.
Treating the whole company as one position. Different ranks face different markets. A single company-wide percentile target overspends on some roles and underspends on the ones actually causing problems.
Excluding benefits. Medical coverage and retirement contributions are a substantial part of total value, particularly where union scales set the comparison. Excluding them understates competitors who provide them and overstates your own position if you do not.
Announcing before modelling. Calculate the fleet-wide, fully burdened cost including the rotation multiplier before committing to anything. A number that looks modest per person becomes large across a fleet.
Benchmarking only against other vessel operators. For unlicensed and technical ranks, shoreside industrial employers are competing for the same people with a schedule that sends them home nightly. Excluding them from the comparison set produces a benchmark that looks healthy while the crew leave anyway.
How Core Group Resources Runs Jones Act Salary Benchmarking
Core Group Resources offers Jones Act salary benchmarking as a defined service because compensation questions in this market cannot be answered from public averages alone. The value sits in the matching and the normalisation rather than in access to a database.
The process starts with the competitive set. CGR works from the operators a client actually loses crew to and recruits from, which is usually a specific list of companies in one region and trade rather than the industry at large. Roles are matched on credential, tonnage or horsepower limits, vessel type, trade and scope, since two positions sharing a title are frequently not the same job.
Everything is then normalised to annual total value under the client's real rotation, with benefits, travel and overtime treatment included. That produces figures a crewing manager can use in an offer conversation and a CFO can use in a budget discussion, which is unusual for compensation data in this sector.
Because CGR recruits in these markets continuously, the underlying signal comes partly from live hiring activity: what candidates are accepting, what offers are being declined and why, and where departing crew are going. That real-time view fills the gap that published statistics leave, particularly for scarce ranks where a handful of recent placements tell you more than any survey.
The output is typically a position statement by rank against the market, recommended ranges with midpoints, a costed set of options, and a view on which retention levers other than pay would deliver the most for the least.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Jones Act salary benchmarking? It is a structured comparison of a Jones Act operator's crew compensation against the operators it competes with for the same credentialed mariners, matched by rank, vessel type, trade and region, and normalised so that day rates, salaries and benefit packages can be compared on a common annual basis.
How often should we benchmark mariner pay? Annually as a baseline, with an interim review of any rank showing rising turnover, failed searches or repeated counteroffers. In tight markets, data older than twelve months should be treated as directional rather than decisive.
Can we just use BLS data? Use it, but not alone. Federal statistics establish the geographic pattern and a credible floor, and they carry weight with boards. They cannot price a specific seat, because the occupational categories aggregate vessel types, rotations and credential levels that pay very differently.
Should we pay at the market median? Not necessarily, and not uniformly. Target position should vary by rank. Scarce, business-critical ranks such as chief engineer often justify a position above median, while ranks with reliable supply can sit at it. Choosing different targets by rank costs less than moving everyone.
How do we compare a day rate against a salary? Convert both to annual total value under the actual rotation. Multiply the day rate by realistic working days per year, add travel, per diem and overtime treatment, then add the annual value of benefits. Present the result alongside days away from home.
Does higher pay actually fix retention? Partially. Underpaying reliably causes departures, so closing a real gap matters. But research consistently identifies schedule reliability, rest, connectivity and treatment by shore management as major drivers of intent to leave. Benchmarking should test pay and these factors together.
Conclusion
Pay decisions in the Jones Act market carry unusual weight because the labour supply is fixed by citizenship and credentialing, the population of qualified officers is small, and mariners compare packages with each other in detail. Guesswork in that environment produces either overspending or quiet attrition, and both are expensive. A benchmarking exercise built on credential-level job matching, honest rotation normalisation and multiple data sources gives crewing managers a number they can defend in an offer and gives finance a cost they can compare against the alternative. That is a better position than raising pay after the second resignation and hoping it was enough.
If you are heading into a pay review and cannot state where each rank sits against your real competitors, ask Core Group Resources about a Jones Act salary benchmarking review. You will get position by rank, recommended ranges and the costed options behind them.