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Maritime Industry Trends from 2024 – will they continue in 2025?

  • Feb 5, 2025
  • Reading Time: 5 mins

Now we are in 2025, we wanted to share some observations we saw within recruitment, HR and pay and bonuses from last year.

Observations from the Maritime HR Association

At the end of 2024, the Maritime HR Association published their Market Analysis Foreword that summarised the main trends of the year.

This found that one of the key trends in 2024 in maritime salaries was the decline in dry bulk bonuses. Having reported high bonuses in the dry bulk market in 2021-2023, we noticed an 11% decrease in bonus payments in 2024 compared to 2023. Interestingly, changes in the dry bulk market are only reflected in the following year’s bonus payments.

By contrast, tanker bonuses have shown steady growth since 2022. In 2024, the average USD equivalent for bonuses paid in the tanker market increased by 44% compared to 2023.

Having reached 60.1% in 2024, inflation in Turkey has urged maritime companies to pay their Turkish-based employees in USD and EUR rather than Turkish Lira to compensate for the inflation.

Observations from the Seafarer Employers’ Association

A notable shift this year is the increasing importance of annual pay reviews for seafarers. All respondents confirmed they conduct yearly pay reviews, a 10% rise compared to 2023, signalling a stronger commitment to fair remuneration amidst global talent shortages. Over the last few years, we have seen a shift from a more laissez-faire approach – annual reviews for seafarer pay are now universal.

However, reviews don’t always translate to pay rises. Despite overall upward pay trends, pay freezes persist in some companies, albeit less than the 21% of companies that in 2023 forecasted a pay freeze for 2024. In reality, the Spinnaker report showed that 16% of Senior Officers and 21% of Junior Officers were affected, with no pay rise given in 2024. Whilst 37% of companies awarding raises between 2.1% and 3% to Junior Officers, this wage growth has not kept pace with inflation. For Senior Officers, however, no uniform trend emerged, with 73% of companies awarding a rise of over 1.1%. The remaining 27% saw either a rise of less than 1%, a pay freeze or even pay decrease.

A third of companies are forecasting a further 2.1%-3% wage increases for Junior Officers next year and only 5% of companies forecasting a rise of any more than 3%. Senior Officers and Ratings are also expected to benefit, with 32% and 37% of companies, respectively, forecasting similar raises.

In a significant departure from tradition, fewer companies now differentiate wages based on nationality. Cruise operators, in particular, are leading this charge, maintaining consistent pay strategies regardless of nationality. Only 45% of participants reported using nationality-based pay scales, compared to 54% in 2023. “This is something we’ll be keeping a close eye on,” says Brown. “Even 50% of non-cruise employers say they are not differentiating pay based upon nationality. We want to understand whether this means levelling up or levelling down for particular nationalities and whether it means that some nationalities previously seen as ‘too expensive’ might now benefit or if that means they will simply have to accept lower wages to obtain employment.” Of course, pay differentiation has not gone away. Filipino Senior Officers on crude tankers, for instance, experienced relatively large YoY increases of up to 6%, but still earn less than their Polish, Latvian, and British counterparts.

Performance bonuses remain common for Officers, with 67% of companies paying them. Ratings continue to lag behind, with only 22% of employers extending bonuses to this group. On a positive note, the vast majority of respondents now provide essential benefits like medical coverage, disability insurance, and death-in service payouts, regardless of rank.

Observations from Recruitment

One trend noticed in 2024 was an increase in the number of companies willing to hire employees, certainly in the sales function, as fully remote, and this was primarily for those organisations looking to break into new market segments.

This was a notable increase in companies in post start-up and now growth phase looking to increase their market share. Where organisations do not have a physical entity, employees are encouraged to operate as self-employed for the organisation or utilise an Employer of Record.

This has helped companies hiring abilities as they are now able to tap into talent pools that were previously inaccessible. This not something new for companies to do, yet an increased openness and tolerance to remote working will ultimately help certain companies succeed in their business strategies.

Many companies wary of this, trying to hold onto the “in the office” mentality, and those that have gone against the grain of enforcing employees to return to office are seeing the benefits.

Working from home continues to be a hot topic, we now have candidates who won’t consider roles without the hybrid working. We have one role we could have filled ten times over but there was no option for working from home so the vacancy continues to remain vacant.

But what has been notable this year is the amount of disruptive movement from brokers and owners who have previously enjoyed very little staff turnover. It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons, but there have been a number of startups and investment-backed pushes for new markets, some have lost their way and the brokers just seem to have an acquisitive appetite at present.

Singapore has become very expensive and less attractive for expats. Dubai is finally achieving its long-touted potential – there are more brokers and commercial departments in Dubai than ever before and  people are attracted by the tax-free status.

More HR professionals continue to join the industry as shipping employers continue to professionalise how they treat their people properly. There has been a culture change where people can feel shipping is becoming a more emotionally safe place to work. It’s not just lip service any more.

The shift to decarbonisation is also attracting more people to shipping in the technology domain; the job titles of 180 people in the annual salary survey Spinnaker runs for the Maritime HR Association are in the ‘sustainability sector – an increase from previous years but still dominated by the biggest shipping companies.

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