America’s biggest warship builder says pouring more money into experienced workers is paying off

• Top US shipbuilder HII has been investing more in its workers.
• The company says that’s led to better hiring and retention of a more experienced workforce.
• Solving workforce problems is considered key to solving larger US shipbuilding issues.

US shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries is putting more money into wages and a new workforce strategy, and it’s finding that it’s not only hiring more experienced workers but also retaining them, a top executive shared last week.

The company, the largest US warship builder, unveiled its new strategy for fixing shipbuilding workforce problems last year, and it’s now seeing positive signs that are making it “cautiously optimistic,” CEO Chris Kastner said.

During HII’s third-quarter earnings call, Kastner said that the Newport News shipyard in Virginia saw “an increase in experienced hires following the wage investment this summer and increased hiring from regional workforce development pipelines, which provides more proficient incoming shipbuilders,” calling the efforts “important steps to stabilize and level up the experience of our workforce.”

In February, a senior HII official lamented the loss of experienced workers as the shipbuilding industry hollowed out after the Cold War with decreased demand for the construction of ships at scale. They said worker experience for some jobs had dropped to a fraction of what it was in the mid-1990s.

Over 4,600 shipbuilders have been hired year-to-date, and retention rates at the Virginia yard and Ingalls in Mississippi have increased, the CEO said last week. More workers are also being hired from regional workforce development centers, apprenticeship schools, and dedicated high school programs as well.

HII said last fall that it was going to hire fewer green workers and instead increase wages to bring in and keep more experienced talent, and leadership has continued to emphasize that this year. Funding provided by Congress earlier this year to support the maritime industrial base has been fueling investments in workforce wages, as well as workforce support and technology modernization.

In March, Ronald O’Rourke, a naval affairs analyst with the Congressional Research Service, wrote in a background report for Congress that workforce problems were central factors to projected delays for US Navy shipbuilding projects.

These, he wrote, include “challenges in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of production workers at shipyards and supplier firms, lower productivity of newly hired workers compared with more experienced workers, and limited numbers of ship designers” like naval architects and marine engineers.

O’Rourke and other experts then told the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee that addressing these issues was the first step to getting the Navy’s priority programs back on track.

At the time, the main solution brought up to address lingering problems was higher, more competitive wages that would increase interest in shipbuilding jobs, as well as improving the quality of life and working conditions in the yards.

HII’s pursuit of that approach has the company feeling “kind of cautiously optimistic and we hope to keep it going,” Kastner said.