Although 2020 has brought a magnitude of challenges to the maritime industry, chartering and freight trading compensation appears relatively unscathed. Base salaries, bonus payments and total compensation has remained on par with previous years. But is change on the horizon?
Base salaries highest in…
Base salaries in the US are among the highest across all job levels, with Singapore paying similar at Professional and Senior Professional level. At Manager and Head of / Director levels though, the US is joined by Denmark as one of the highest payers.
A shift at the top?
37% of the highest of proportion of staff in Singapore at Professional and Senior Professional level are Singaporean nationals. So, it will be interesting to see if salaries in Singapore at higher levels increase as these staff progress further.
More women poised for senior positions in the future
Women are still underrepresented in chartering and freight trading jobs. This year 17% of all incumbents are women and 47% of them are working at Junior / Trainee and Professional level, a slight increase on last year. Could this indicate more women joining the specialism? If so, in a few years could we see these women progress through the job family and hold more senior positions? Only time will tell.
We are already seeing this happening on a small scale at the Manager / Senior Manager level where the percentage of women has increased this year.
Tankers continue to pay highest
The same old continues when looking at company types and vessel type. As we saw with last year, the tanker industry pays their charterers and freight traders the highest when compared with Dry Bulk and Mixed Fleet incumbents. Oil companies and commodity groups are still higher payers than their shipowner counterparts.
While we may expect some areas of the industry impacted by the pandemic, so far the indication is that Chartering and Freight Trading has become a more important aspect of maritime companies as the ‘money makers’. There are some changes happening with regards to demographics so we will keep an eye on how this changes over the next few years.
These insights were brought to you from Spinnaker’s benchmarking team using data from our 2020 shore-based salary benchmarking report. Want to know more? Contact Helen McCaughran at [email protected].
