Ridgeline In The News | Fortune: Jamie Dimon says six-figure shipyard jobs are the new ‘American Dream’—but candidates will need to endure hours of extreme heat, cold, and rain

The following is an excerpt of Ridgeline's mention in Fortune.

Earlier this month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon pointed to shipbuilding as an example of the modern American Dream: a career where workers can earn six-figure salaries after just a few years of training while helping rebuild a critical piece of U.S. infrastructure. And while on paper, it’s an attractive proposition—in practice, it might be a much harder sell.

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Beyond shipyards, maritime careers offer Gen Z six-figure opportunities hiding in plain sight

The maritime hiring boom isn’t just limited to shipbuilders.

“In the maritime industry, you’ve got an aging workforce and all of these high-demand jobs where, in many cases, kids can earn six figures shortly after high school,” said Pat O’Donnell, cofounder and CEO of Ridgeline, a San Francisco-based nonprofit building career pathways in part in the maritime industry.

As shipbuilding expands, companies are also hiring deck hands, marine engineers, logistics specialists, supply chain managers, business professionals, and vessel operators—careers spanning everything from designing ships to maintaining them to managing the global movement of cargo.

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Many of those jobs don’t require a four-year degree, but when they do, one of the clearest pathways into the industry is through one of the nation’s maritime academies, including the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island and state maritime schools in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Texas.

The biggest challenge, O’Donnell said, remains awareness, citing the fact that some maritime positions such as welding are simply going unfilled because young people
don’t know they exist.

“As a country or as a region, if we really start to invest in shipbuilding,” O’Donnell told Fortune. “There will be so many more jobs that are going to need a pipeline that
currently we’re not actually building at scale."

Read the full article by Preston Fore on the Fortune website.