Remuneration and attractiveness of EU blue economy sectors

Significant efforts are devoted in the European Union (EU) to increase the attractiveness of blue economy jobs, address skilled workforce shortages and reduce the skill gap between business requirements and qualifications offered by the education and training systems. This article investigates how the job attractiveness of the different blue economy sectors has changed over time in the EU by analysing the evolution of labour cost per employee measured in full time equivalents (FTE) as a proxy of the remuneration. This is complemented with the analysis of two other factors influencing job attractiveness, namely job security and job safety. Our findings show the existence of substantial labour cost differences for different maritime sectors, which explain distinct job attractiveness patterns between the EU blue economy as a whole and the rest of the economy. In particular, economic activities that employ highly-skilled labour force and generate higher labour productivity provide higher salaries than those employing less skilled workers. However, working in a riskier environment often does not necessarily correlate with a higher remuneration. Outcomes from this analysis help to better understand the reasons behind current labour shortages in some EU blue economy sectors, and provide important insights for designing more targeted investments in key human capital gaps and for calibrating policies to reduce workforce shortages in the EU labour markets.