Secretary of the Navy John Phelan stressed that America’s shipyards would need 250,000 additional workers in the near future—to be accomplished through apprenticeships, vocational training, and competitive pay.

The philosophical debate/riddle—”Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”—has a clear answer: there were life forms that laid eggs long before there were chickens.

This point is salient to the United States Navy. It clearly needs to increase its fleet size, but the issue isn’t simply a matter of building more ships. For the Navy to meet the demands of the 21st century, the US shipbuilding sector needs many, many more dockworkers—at least a quarter of a million, by Navy estimates, to replace those who are retiring.

“Systems don’t build ships. People do,” Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said on Tuesday at the Surface Navy Association’s national symposium when discussing the planned Golden Fleet.

Since the late 1970s, the United States has shuttered more than a dozen “defense-related” shipyards nationwide, with only a single new shipyard having been opened. Still, building new shipyards from scratch isn’t the immediate concern. That would be the chicken—and first, the Navy needs the proverbial egg, which in this case is the workers required to sustain them.

The Graying of America’s Shipbuilding Sector

Even as President Donald Trump calls for a “Golden Fleet” with a new class of battleships—the first built since World War II—as part of some magical “Golden Age” he envisions for America, he fails to acknowledge a key point: the nation’s labor workforce is “graying” quickly. Older adults, those aged 55+, constitute a large share of the labor force today. This is especially true at the nation’s shipyards.

“A quarter of the shipyard workforce is retirement eligible within five years,” warned Phelan. “Over the next decade, shipbuilders and suppliers will need to hire roughly 250,000 skilled workers to meet demand.”

Phelan said that there needs to be apprenticeships, vocational training, accelerated pipelines, and partnerships within local communities, but even that might not be enough.

“It also means paying fair wages,” Phelan added. He further suggested that the industry needs to maintain “consistent build schedules so shipyard workers can have lifetime careers. AI and automation do not replace the workforce.”

The US Navy Could Also Turn to Foreign Shipyards

The Biden Administration explored ways that foreign shipyards—notably those in Japan and South Korea, which are more efficient and cost-competitive than those in the United States—could support the maintenance and, if needed, the rebuilding of the Navy. The Trump Administration hasn’t followed through on the efforts, however. Instead, the solution seems to be to simply throw money at the problem.

Last week, Trump proposed increasing the Pentagon’s budget by $500 billion to $1.5 trillion. Critics warn that Trump’s move would add $5.8 trillion to the national debt by 2035. More importantly, though, it doesn’t solve the workforce shortage.

“An aging workforce presents a potential crisis in an environment where the US Navy has several critical ongoing shipbuilding programs, such as the Virginia-class Fast Attack Submarine, the Columbia-class Ballistic Missile Submarine, BBG(X), FF(X), and Arleigh Burke Flight III production ongoing simultaneously. An expansion of current and future production capacity necessitates drastic changes to the workforce,” Naval News explained.

AI and Robots Could Help the Navy Meets Its Goals, Too

Even as Phelan suggested that automation and robots will not replace the workforce, there have been efforts to employ artificial intelligence and robots to address the labor shortage and support shipbuilding. Semi-autonomous robots are already handling basic construction tasks such as welding. Unlike humans, robotic systems can operate 24 hours per day—and are well-suited to repetitive tasks and jobs that require manual labor.

Still, it would still take years to implement the systems, and it fails to address the shortage of shipyards. There is also the issue that, even as there is a labor shortage, some labor unions may oppose adopting such technology because they fear it will displace well-paying jobs. 

Thus, in this riddle, the egg comes before the chicken—but the egg already appears quite scrambled.

About the Author: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu has contributed over 3,200 published pieces to more than four dozen magazines and websites over a 30-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a contributing writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image: Shutterstock / Constantine Lukashin.

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