The Navy’s Missing Welders Are Stocking Shelves

The U.S. Navy’s May 2026 shipbuilding plan , signed by Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, uses the word “innovative” eight times.

由代理海军部长曹洪签署的美国海军2026年5月造船计划八次使用“创新”一词。

The plan applies that word, among other things, to the Columbia-class submarine, an acquisition strategy for the medium landing ship, and new approaches to running the public shipyards.

该计划将这个词应用到哥伦比亚级潜艇、中型登陆舰的采购策略以及运营公共造船厂的新方法等方面。

Elsewhere, the shipbuilding plan notes that recent increases in wages at Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding got both yards to their required 2025 hiring rate and cut attrition by two to five percent.

在其他地方，造船计划指出，最近电船和纽波特纽斯造船厂的工资上涨，使两家船厂达到了 2025 年所需的雇用率，并将人员流失率减少了 2% 至 5%。

While added funding is a welcome salve to the Navy’s well-known problem of shipyard worker shortages, it is insufficient as a long-term solution, and hardly innovative.

虽然增加资金对于解决海军众所周知的造船厂工人短缺问题是一个受欢迎的解决方案，但它不足以作为长期解决方案，而且几乎没有创新性。

The yards are still 174,000 workers short .

造船厂仍短缺 174,000 名工人。

Recent wage increases only reached people already in shipyard jobs, not the larger pool who never applied and cannot afford unpaid months of training.

最近的工资上涨只惠及已经在造船厂工作的人，而不是那些从未申请且无法承担数月无薪培训的更大群体。

What nobody has tried yet is recruiting a cashier at a mall forty miles away with the same money.

还没有人尝试过用同样的钱在四十英里外的一家购物中心招募一名收银员。

Reaching that cashier or other would-be shipyard workers will require an intermediary that pays them during the intermediate training period between jobs, and no such broker yet exists.

要接触到收银员或其他未来的造船厂工人，需要有一个中间人在工作之间的中间培训期间向他们支付工资，但目前还没有这样的中间人。

The Navy can close this gap by measuring programs on whether they reach new entrants, redirecting advertising money to pay trainees while they learn, and letting each shipbuilding region name one accountable intermediary to broker that training.

海军可以通过衡量计划是否吸引新进入者、将广告资金用于支付受训者学习费用以及让每个造船地区指定一名负责任的中间人来协调培训来缩小这一差距。

Forty Miles from the Yard That the Navy needs shipyard workers is not in dispute.

距离造船厂四十英里 海军需要造船厂工人是没有争议的。

In April, the Government Accountability Office told a House panel that none of the seven yards building the Navy’s ships was positioned to meet its delivery goals , and it named the workforce as one of the two reasons, alongside the yards’ own infrastructure.

四月，政府问责办公室告诉众议院小组，建造海军舰艇的七个造船厂都无法满足其交付目标，并将劳动力以及造船厂自身的基础设施列为两个原因之一。

To be sure, the pipeline the Navy and the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office have built has made meaningful progress.

可以肯定的是，海军和五角大楼采购和保障办公室建造的管道已经取得了有意义的进展。

The six regional Talent Pipeline Programs have placed more than 15,000 workers with more than 500 suppliers since 2021 , and the Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance has trained more than 10,000 people for the shipbuilding base.

自2021年以来，六个地区人才管道计划已为500多家供应商安置了15,000多名工人，新英格兰东南部国防工业联盟已为造船基地培训了10,000多名人员。

Newport News’s Apprentice School has trained shipbuilders since 1919, about 200 a year .

纽波特纽斯的学徒学校自 1919 年以来一直在培训造船工人，每年培训约 200 名造船工人。

The primes, for their part, are acting as typical incumbents.

就总理而言，他们的行为就像典型的现任者一样。

Huntington Ingalls Industries announced in April 2025 that it would step back from hiring green shipbuilders and pay for experience instead, and by October, its chief executive was crediting a Navy-funded summer wage increase at Newport News with more experienced hires and lower attrition.

亨廷顿英格尔斯工业公司 (Huntington Ingalls Industries) 于 2025 年 4 月宣布，将不再雇用绿色造船商，而是根据经验支付工资。到 10 月，该公司首席执行官将海军资助的纽波特纽斯夏季工资上涨归功于经验丰富的员工和较低的人员流失。

In March 2025, Brett Seidle, then the Navy’s acting acquisition executive, told the Senate that first-year attrition across the yards runs 50 to 60 percent .

2025 年 3 月，时任海军代理采购主管的布雷特·塞德尔 (Brett Seidle) 告诉参议院，造船厂第一年的人员流失率为 50% 至 60%。

For a yard with hulls to deliver, bidding for the experienced tradesman and abandoning the entry level is the rational move.

对于有船体交付的船厂来说，对经验丰富的商人进行投标并放弃入门级是合理的举动。

The low end of the market is now up for grabs.

低端市场现在正在争夺中。

In May 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 3.09 million cashiers earning a median pay of $33,180, 3.85 million fast-food and counter workers at $32,150, and 3.90 million retail salespersons at $37,310.

2025 年 5 月，美国劳工统计局统计，有 309 万名收银员的年薪中位数为 33,180 美元，385 万名快餐店和柜台工作人员的年薪中位数为 32,150 美元，390 万名零售销售人员的年薪中位数为 37,310 美元。

The same survey put a welder’s median pay at $53,750 , a machinist’s at $58,750 , and an industrial machinery mechanic’s near $64,500 .

同一项调查显示，焊工的工资中位数为 53,750 美元，机械师的工资中位数为 58,750 美元，工业机械技工的工资中位数接近 64,500 美元。

A cashier weighing an upward move into a new industry would likely look at the first-year wage, which at Newport News, the largest yard of the country’s largest shipbuilder , now starts near $57,000 for an entry-level welder after the raises the Navy funded last year.

考虑进入新行业的出纳员可能会考虑第一年的工资，在美国最大造船厂的最大造船厂纽波特纽斯，继去年海军资助的加薪之后，现在入门级焊工的起薪接近 57,000 美元。

Thanks to raised wages, the pay at the end of the training program is no longer the problem, but getting there means quitting a job and going months without a paycheck.

由于工资提高，培训计划结束时的工资不再是问题，但要达到这一目标就意味着要辞去工作，并且几个月都没有工资。

The $24,000 difference in pay may not be reachable for someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, if he or she has to skip shifts to attend daytime classes.

对于那些靠工资生活的人来说，如果他或她必须跳班去参加日间课程，那么这 24,000 美元的工资差异可能是无法承受的。

What that worker could use is a three-and-a-half-hour class at five in the morning, so the paid shift is still waiting when the class lets out.

该工人可以使用的是早上五点的三个半小时的课程，因此当课程结束时，带薪轮班仍在等待。

Any community college could offer that class next term, and yet none do, because states pay community colleges by the head .

任何社区大学都可以在下学期提供该课程，但没有一家这样做，因为各州按人头向社区大学支付费用。

Thirty-seven states fund their two-year colleges on a count of full-time-equivalent students , and a five o’clock section for a dozen working adults does not move that count.

三十七个州根据相当于全日制学生的人数为其两年制大学提供资金，而为十几个在职成年人提供的五点钟部分并没有改变这一数字。

The Navy’s workforce money has the same blind spot.

海军的劳动力资金也有同样的盲点。

It pays for advertising, including about $100 million in one year on the submarine recruiting campaign.

它支付广告费用，其中包括一年约 1 亿美元的潜艇招募活动费用。

It also pays for classroom seats, 5,500 new ones in 2025 by the Navy’s own tally, and for placement pipelines, 15,000 workers placed through six regional programs the same year.

它还支付教室座位的费用，根据海军自己的统计，到 2025 年将新增 5,500 个座位，并支付安置渠道的费用，同年通过六个地区项目安置了 15,000 名工人。

Even the most generous of these efforts, which covers tuition, housing, and transportation for four months in Danville , leaves the student to cover everything else.

即使是最慷慨的努力，包括在丹维尔四个月的学费、住宿和交通费用，学生也需要承担其他一切费用。

Nothing in that list replaces the paycheck a working adult gives up to enroll.

该清单中的任何内容都无法取代在职成年人为入学而放弃的薪水。

A product built around a paid shift — one that also offers the worker additional wages for missed working hours spent in a classroom — exists in pieces.

一种围绕带薪轮班构建的产品——该产品还为工人在教室里错过工作时间提供额外工资——存在于碎片中。

Assembling them requires a regional “intermediary” that changes who is connected to whom and who carries the risk.

组装它们需要一个区域“中介”来改变谁与谁有联系以及谁承担风险。

In workforce development, that word usually means an apprenticeship sponsor, but other organizations could fill that role.

在劳动力发展中，这个词通常意味着学徒赞助商，但其他组织也可以填补这个角色。

A supplier association could do it, or a chamber of commerce, or a college that decided to change its business model, or an outfit that does not exist yet.

供应商协会、商会、决定改变其商业模式的大学、或者尚不存在的机构都可以做到这一点。

On one side of this intermediary sit employers, chiefly the second- and third-tier suppliers too small to run an academy, and on the other sit working adults.

这个中介的一侧坐着雇主，主要是规模太小而无法经营学院的二线和三线供应商，另一侧则坐着工作的成年人。

What the intermediary runs between them is an eight-to-fifteen-week paid stand-up, on a shift schedule, that ends in a job with an agreed-upon wage.

中间人在他们之间进行的是为期八到十五周的带薪脱口秀，轮班安排，最终以商定的工资完成工作。

The harder work sits around the mechanics of that stand-up, from pooling the two welders one small shop needs with the eighteen the rest of the county needs, through screening the applicants and paying the worker from the first day, to carrying the risk when a placement falls through.

更艰巨的工作围绕着站立的机制，从将一个小商店需要的两名焊工与该县其他地方需要的十八名焊工集中在一起，通过筛选申请人并从第一天开始向工人支付工资，到在安置失败时承担风险。

No college is paid to do that work, and no second- or third-tier supplier is large enough to.

没有一所大学有报酬来做这项工作，也没有一家二线或三线供应商的规模足够大。

The evidence that such a business can raise earnings is real but uneven.

此类企业可以提高收入的证据是真实的，但参差不齐。

WorkAdvance was a test of four programs, each of which trained people for jobs in one industry and then placed them.

WorkAdvance 是对四个项目的测试，每个项目都对人们进行某一行业的工作培训，然后将他们安置。

MDRC (formerly Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation), in its ten-year results , found that one program increased participants’ earnings by 32 percent after a decade, while the other three showed no effect by year ten.

MDRC（前身为人力示范研究公司）在其十年结果中发现，一项计划在十年后将参与者的收入提高了 32%，而其他三个计划在十年后却没有任何效果。

Lawrence Katz and colleagues found that what made the difference in the sector programs that have worked was the work around the classroom, screening up front, and clearing the way into high-wage sectors.

劳伦斯·卡茨（Lawrence Katz）及其同事发现，那些行之有效的行业项目之所以与众不同，是因为围绕课堂开展的工作、预先筛选以及为进入高工资行业扫清了道路。

Registered apprentices averaged about $80,000 in their first year out.

注册学徒第一年的平均收入约为 80,000 美元。

But the evidence above is about the wrong person.

但上面的证据是关于错误的人。

WorkAdvance and the other sector programs enrolled the unemployed or the young.

WorkAdvance 和其他部门计划招收失业者或年轻人。

The apprentices drew a wage only after the trade had hired them.

学徒只有在行业雇用他们后才能领取工资。

The Employment Training Panel is the other nearby case: a company class for its current staff.

就业培训小组是附近的另一个案例：为现有员工举办的公司课程。

Two years later, those sites had about 22 percent more employees than similar companies that got no money.

两年后，这些网站的员工数量比没有资金的类似公司多出约 22%。

That number is about the size of the company, not the worker’s pay, and those workers never left.

这个数字与公司的规模有关，而不是工人的工资，而这些工人从未离开过。

No one has yet followed an adult who quits a $34,000 job.

还没有人跟踪过一位辞去 34,000 美元工作的成年人。

That is the trial the Navy should run this year.

这是海军今年应该进行的试验。

Workforce Pell, which went live on July 1, extends the Pell Grant to short training programs .

Workforce Pell 于 7 月 1 日上线，将佩尔补助金扩展到短期培训项目。

Pell pays the tuition half of what a worker needs to transition to a shipbuilding career, but the other half, the paycheck during training, still has to be pieced together from sources that do not talk to one another.

佩尔支付的学费是工人过渡到造船职业所需费用的一半，但另一半，即培训期间的薪水，仍然必须从彼此不相关的来源拼凑起来。

Part comes from employer payroll, and part could come from state programs such as North Carolina’s Incumbent Worker Training Grant , which reimburses employers for training workers already on the books.

一部分来自雇主工资，一部分可能来自州计划，例如北卡罗来纳州的在职工人培训补助金，该计划向雇主报销已经登记在册的工人培训费用。

An intermediary is the only party that sits where both can be brought together.

中间人是唯一可以将两者聚集在一起的一方。

There are potential risks in paying students to study .

支付学生学费存在潜在风险。

Community colleges are already building eight-week programs to capture the new Workforce Pell dollars , so one question is whether an enrollment-funded college will pay its instructors to teach at early or odd hours to accommodate working students.

社区大学已经在制定为期八周的项目，以获取新的劳动力佩尔资金，因此一个问题是，一所招生资助的大学是否会支付其教师在早期或非正常时间授课的费用，以适应在职学生的需求。

The yards’ first-year attrition record is bad, although that number was set by nineteen-year-olds with no training and no dependents.

该造船厂第一年的人员流失记录很糟糕，尽管这个数字是由没有受过训练且没有家属的 19 岁年轻人创造的。

A thirty-four-year-old with a mortgage who just added $24,000 to the household, however, is a different hire, and no one has recruited such workers into college training programs in any number.

然而，一名 34 岁的有抵押贷款的人刚刚为家庭增加了 24,000 美元，这是一种不同的雇佣方式，而且没有人招募过这样的工人参加任何数量的大学培训项目。

In addition, if shipyard pay fell behind other opportunities a few years into a new shipyard worker’s career, an intermediary could end up training people the yards cannot keep.

此外，如果造船厂新工人职业生涯几年后，造船厂的工资落后于其他机会，中介机构最终可能会培训造船厂留不住的人。

Seidle told the House last year that a shipyard job once paid three or four times what comparable work paid and now pays 1.2 to 1.4 times as much.

Seidle 去年告诉众议院，造船厂工作的工资曾经是同类工作的三到四倍，现在是 1.2 到 1.4 倍。

Only the Navy can mitigate this risk, and the recently announced raises mentioned earlier are a good start.

只有海军可以减轻这种风险，前面提到的最近宣布的加薪是一个良好的开始。

The intermediary faces another big risk if and when many new hires quit, often in the first year.

如果许多新员工辞职（通常是在第一年），中介机构将面临另一个巨大风险。

The Navy has already counted those quitters in its 174,000-worker shortage.

海军已经将这些辞职者计入其 174,000 名工人短缺中。

An intermediary built to address this problem would have to pay a worker through training and stay in touch through the first year.

为解决这个问题而建立的中介机构必须向工人支付培训费用，并在第一年保持联系。

The president of Newport News Shipbuilding has said that a shipbuilder who lasts the first year can double the entry wage within two.

纽波特纽斯造船厂总裁表示，坚持第一年的造船厂可以在两年内将入职工资翻倍。

What the Department of the Navy could do about any of this is modest, but the Navy is the buyer, and the buyer gets to set the conditions.

海军部对此所能做的事情是有限的，但海军是买家，买家可以设定条件。

The first fix could be a reporting rule requiring every workforce effort the Navy funds, and every contractor or office it pays to recruit or train, to report the prior-year earnings of the people it places.

第一个解决办法可能是制定一项报告规则，要求海军资助的每一项劳动力工作，以及它支付的招募或培训费用的每个承包商或办公室，报告其安置人员的上一年收入。

State workforce agencies already hold quarterly wage records for nearly every worker, and the Navy need only ask for the year before enrollment as well as the year after.

州劳动力机构已经保存了几乎所有工人的季度工资记录，海军只需要询问入学前一年和入学后一年的情况。

The Labor Department scores every workforce participant against those same records today, so the Navy would be asking for data that already had been collected.

劳工部今天根据这些相同的记录对每个劳动力参与者进行评分，因此海军将要求提供已经收集的数据。

These figures would help the Navy ascertain who the program actually reached.

这些数字将帮助海军确定该计划的实际覆盖对象。

A program whose placements earned $50,000 the year before enrollment poached welders from elsewhere.

一个项目在入学前一年的实习收入为 50,000 美元，从其他地方挖走了焊工。

A program whose placements earned $33,000 the year before reached the more meaningful target, such as the cashier at the mall, or others making a career change from a lower-paying job.

前一年的安置收入为 33,000 美元的项目达到了更有意义的目标，例如商场的收银员，或其他从低薪工作转行的人。

The second change is to pay the worker while he or she trains.

第二个变化是在工人培训期间向他或她支付工资。

Workforce Pell, as noted, already covers classroom costs.

如前所述，佩尔的劳动力已经涵盖了课堂费用。

However, nothing covers the fifteen weeks of wages the worker gives up, so the Navy can offer a “wage bridge.” Fifteen weeks at forty hours and $18 an hour comes to about $11,000 a worker.

然而，没有任何东西可以弥补工人放弃的十五周工资，因此海军可以提供“工资桥梁”。十五周四十个小时，每小时 18 美元，相当于每个工人的工资约为 11,000 美元。

For comparison, the Navy’s recruiting campaign for the submarine industrial base spent about $100 million in Fiscal Year 2023 to produce roughly 9,700 hires, about $10,000 a hire once the half who quit in the first year are counted.

相比之下，海军潜艇工业基地的招募活动在 2023 财年花费了约 1 亿美元，招募了约 9,700 名员工，如果算上第一年辞职的一半，每名员工的工资约为 10,000 美元。

The Navy already spends a training paycheck on every recruit.

海军已经为每名新兵支付了训练工资。

It just spends it on advertising.

它只是把钱花在广告上。

This bridge money would come with the same strings Workforce Pell already attaches to tuition money.

这笔过渡资金将附带与劳动力佩尔已经附加在学费上的相同条件。

A program keeps its federal funding only if 70 percent of its students finish, 70 percent are placed in jobs, and their earnings exceed what the training cost .

一个项目只有在 70% 的学生完成学业、70% 的学生找到工作、并且他们的收入超过培训成本的情况下才能保留其联邦资助。

A wage bridge held to those same conditions would pay only for programs that produce shipbuilders.

保持同样条件的工资桥梁将只为培养造船厂的项目提供资金。

The third change would be to let each region name its own intermediary, hold it to placement and prior-year earnings, and let it serve the supplier tier as well as the yards.

第三个变化是让每个地区指定自己的中介机构，使其遵守安置和上一年的收益，并让它为供应商层和船厂提供服务。

This is what a defense manufacturing region designation would give the Navy.

这就是国防制造地区指定给海军的名称。

A region is a yard, the suppliers that feed it, and the colleges, workforce boards, and civic institutions within commuting distance of both.

一个地区就是一个院子，是为其提供食物的供应商，也是通勤距离内的大学、劳动力委员会和市政机构。

The right intermediary would be whichever of those institutions already convenes the employers, or could.

合适的中间人应该是这些机构中已经或可以召集雇主的机构。

In southeastern New England, that might mean the Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance.

在新英格兰东南部，这可能意味着新英格兰东南部国防工业联盟。

In New Orleans, it might be a body like Greater New Orleans, Inc., the regional economic development organization.

在新奥尔良，它可能是一个类似于大新奥尔良公司（地区经济发展组织）的机构。

In San Diego, it could be the city itself.

在圣地亚哥，它可能是城市本身。

These are examples, but the Navy does not need to choose.

这些都是例子，但海军不需要选择。

It needs to name the region, set the conditions, and let the region pick the body that fits local conditions.

它需要给区域命名，设定条件，让区域选择适合当地条件的身体。

For 30 years, the Navy’s training system for shipyard workers has refined a product for people already inclined to enroll.

30 年来，海军的造船厂工人培训系统为已经倾向于报名的人们改进了产品。

The Navy’s next thousand welders are not in that market.

海军接下来的一千名焊工并不在这个市场。

They are at the register in a mall forty miles away, and still nobody has made them an offer.

他们在四十英里外一家商场的收银台前，仍然没有人向他们出价。

Michael Gilroy is vice president for workforce development at the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness in Arlington, Virginia, where he supports the Department of Defense’s manufacturing workforce programs.

迈克尔·吉尔罗伊 (Michael Gilroy) 是弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿地区经济竞争力中心负责劳动力发展的副总裁，负责支持国防部的制造业劳动力计划。

A retired Army officer and graduate of the Naval War College, he previously directed workforce programs at both the Departments of Labor and Defense.

他是一名退役陆军军官，毕业于海军战争学院，曾在劳工部和国防部负责劳动力项目。