EXPOSED
The core of this job — standing lookout watch, handling mooring lines, chipping and painting steel, lubricating and monitoring engine-room machinery, securing cargo and rigging gear — happens with hands on wet, moving equipment in weather, which language models cannot touch. The real threat is not chatbots but crew-size reduction: sensor-based watchkeeping, condition-monitoring on engines, and automated engine-room alarms let owners sail with fewer deckhands and oilers per hull, and reduced-manning and autonomous-vessel pilots are already underway. Merchant Mariner Credential and TWIC requirements plus strong maritime unions slow the headcount squeeze more than any AI limitation does.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $43,480 → $51,520 -5.2% 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
+2.3% 32,100 → 32,800 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +2.3% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 60/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
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.
~3,900 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
BosunCadetOilerWiperSailorScalerSeamanYeomanBoatmanCrewmanFloaterLookoutMarinerScowmanSteererBargemanDeckhandFerrymanFloatmanHandymanRivermanWheelmanBoat HandDeck Hand
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Heaving mooring lines onto bollards, chipping rust and painting a rolling deck, splicing wire rope, standing bow lookout in fog, and hand-lubing a running generator are physical acts on unpredictable steel and water — none of them decompose into text or API calls, which is why this sits at 16 rather than mid-band; the points off reflect that logbook entries, watch reporting, and sensor-fed rounds are already partly displaced by automated alarms and condition monitoring.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work on a pitching deck in spray and heat, in confined engine spaces at 40°C, handling lines under tension and hatches that crush — an environment that is not merely physical but actively hostile and never the same twice, which is what separates 19 from a warehouse job at 12.
Licensed human required and personally liable A Merchant Mariner Credential with STCW Basic Training and a TWIC is legally mandatory to walk the gangway, and the Coast Guard can suspend or revoke that document under 46 CFR Part 5 for your own negligence — but you sign no vessel documents and the master and licensed engineer carry the operational liability, so this lands at 11 rather than in the high teens.
Meaningful discretion Most of the day runs on standing orders, watch routines, PMS cards and the bosun's work list, but you make live calls that nobody can second-guess in time: whether that contact on the bow is closing, whether a mooring line is about to part, whether a bearing temperature or unusual noise warrants calling the engineer — real discretion with a short fuse, though the consequential decisions escalate to the bridge, which holds it at 9.
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 (16/20 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 (11/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (5/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) 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 25 of this occupation's 60 points (42%).
Embodiment (19/20) 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.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to sailors and marine oilers on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
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 74/100 — SAFE.
Jones Act / SOLAS-adjacent enforcement where a lookout failure is charged against the individual credentialed AB under 46 CFR 15.405 and Rule 5 COLREGS, with USCG suspension-and-revocation proceedings continuing to name persons rather than the sensor vendor — already the pattern in NTSB marine casualty reports (e.g. Conception, El Faro follow-on actions).
Union contract mechanisms — SIU, MM&P, MEBA, or AMO collective bargaining agreements specifying minimum unlicensed ratings per watch section as a contractual condition, plus Maritime Security Program subsidy conditions tying US-flag operating agreements to crew complement.
USCG minimum safe manning certificates and STCW Chapter VIII rest/watch rules being written to require a specified number of credentialed ratings forming part of a navigational watch regardless of sensor coverage — i.e. IMO's MASS Code (due to enter force ~2028 as non-mandatory, mandatory target 2032) landing with a hard 'no reduction of certificated ratings below X' floor rather than a goal-based equivalence test. Equivalence-based drafting instead lowers this.
If reduced-manning crews mean each remaining rating owns more consequential unsupervised calls — sole lookout in restricted visibility, first responder on an engine-room alarm with no second oiler, confined-space entry decisions — the surviving job is the judgment tier. Watch for USCG-approved reduced-manning trials that pair fewer ratings with expanded individual authority.
Task-mix shift: routine chipping, painting, and gauge-rounds absorbed by contracted shoreside riding gangs and condition-monitoring, leaving mooring in heavy weather, casualty response, and hands-on machinery repair at sea. The remaining hours are the ones no sensor covers.
The limit. trust_premium has no realistic route: cargo shippers and charterers are invisible to the deck crew and buy freight rates, not human hands. Also, embodiment at 19 and task_resistance at 16 are already near ceiling — the displacement mechanism here is headcount per hull, not task capability, so the only real defenses are manning regulation and union contract floors.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 3,470 | $55,610 +8% |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | 2,830 | $48,210 -6% |
| Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA | 2,140 | $48,500 -6% |
| New Orleans-Metairie, LA | 1,940 | $43,630 -15% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,720 | $62,550 +21% |
| Baton Rouge, LA | 1,310 | $47,520 -8% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 1,150 | $57,870 +12% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,080 | $68,740 +33% |
| Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 200 | $79,870 +55% |
| Urban Honolulu, HI | 250 | $76,330 +48% |
| Jacksonville, FL | 700 | $75,530 +47% |
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 60. 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.