SAFE
The core of this job is conning a vessel through traffic, weather, currents, and narrow channels while commanding a crew — physical, situational work that autonomous shipping trials have not come close to replacing at scale. A USCG license (master, mate, or pilot endorsement) is legally required and the master carries personal liability for the vessel, cargo, and lives aboard. Log-keeping, voyage planning, cargo paperwork, and route optimization are already being automated, which trims the desk half of the job but not the bridge half.
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $72,340 → $92,460 +2.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+0.5% 40,700 → 40,900 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +0.5% more of these jobs by 2034. Note that safe does not mean well paid — several of the fastest-growing resistant occupations are among the lowest paid on the register.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~4,300 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
MatePilotCaptainOfficerSkipperBar PilotBoat MateBoatswainNavigatorShip MateTankermanBarge MateBoat PilotFirst MateLine PilotShip PilotShipmasterThird MateBarge PilotBoat MasterDock MasterDredge MateFerry PilotFourth Mate
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Docking a loaded tug-and-barge unit in a 3-knot cross-current, judging a crossing situation under COLREGS Rule 15 against a fishing fleet that isn't broadcasting AIS, and ordering a crew to secure lines in a swell are not scripted procedures — the 15 rather than 18 reflects that ECDIS voyage planning, ballast calculations, and noon reports have already left your hands.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work on a moving platform in weather you don't control — climbing to the bridge wing to eyeball clearance, boarding a moving ship off a pilot ladder in a swell, walking the deck in ice — and the 17 rather than 20 only accounts for the hours you spend seated at a chart table or console.
Licensed human required and personally liable A USCG Master, Mate, or Pilot endorsement under 46 CFR Part 11 is a personal credential: after a grounding or allision it's your license at the suspension-and-revocation hearing, your name on the 2692, and potential criminal exposure under the Refuse Act or Seaman's Manslaughter statute — held below 20 only because pilotage associations and vessel owners absorb much of the civil damage claim.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls When the fog closes in, you decide alone whether to anchor or proceed, whether to accept the tow, whether the cargo is safely stowed for the forecast sea state — Master's Overriding Authority under the ISM Code exists precisely because no shore office can be given that call, and the 17 rather than 20 reflects standing orders, company SMS procedures, and compulsory pilotage that narrow the field.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (15/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (17/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (8/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (17/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 42 of this occupation's 74 points (57%).
Embodiment (17/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 82/100, still SAFE.
IMO's MASS Code (non-mandatory code targeted for 2026, mandatory instrument aimed at 2030s) landing with an explicit 'master' role requirement — i.e. a licensed human master remains legally designated for any degree of autonomy, including remote operation centers, plus USCG implementing regs and P&I club/H&M underwriters conditioning cover on a licensed master of record. Also state pilotage compulsory-pilotage statutes (e.g. Panama Canal, Columbia River Bar, NY/NJ Sandy Hook) being reaffirmed rather than waived for autonomous transits.
Task-mix shift: this job genuinely has two tiers. Once voyage planning, cargo docs, ECDIS route optimization, and log-keeping are fully automated, what remains is close-quarters maneuvering, docking in wind and current, emergency response, and crew command — the tier autonomy trials have not touched. Watch for whether operators cut deck officers per vessel or just cut the paperwork load.
Post-casualty rulemaking — in the pattern of the Dali/Key Bridge NTSB inquiry — that formalizes the master's override authority over automated conning and collision-avoidance systems, making the human the named decision authority under COLREGs Rule 2 'ordinary practice of seamen'. Raises the accountability score to the ceiling.
Cruise, superyacht, and charter segments where passengers pay for a visible human master already carry a small premium, but this is a narrow slice of the occupation; cargo and tug charterers buy schedule and hull, not the person on the bridge.
The limit. Already 74 and near-ceiling on embodiment, liability, and judgment; realistic headroom is a few points from MASS Code drafting and post-casualty rulemaking. Trust premium is structurally capped — freight buyers do not pay for a named human. The real risk is not score decline but headcount: crew-size reduction per hull under reduced-manning waivers shrinks the occupation without lowering any dimension.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 2,550 | $118,830 +29% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,060 | $106,230 +15% |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | 2,050 | $86,940 -6% |
| Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA | 2,040 | $103,780 +12% |
| New Orleans-Metairie, LA | 1,940 | $121,710 +32% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 1,710 | $78,280 -15% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,210 | $113,260 +22% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,140 | $109,080 +18% |
| Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN | 800 | $130,380 +41% |
| Baton Rouge, LA | 900 | $129,260 +40% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 440 | $124,610 +35% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 74. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.