Unsung Filipino seafarers power the global economy: No other nation crews so many merchant ships

Unsung Filipino seafarers power the global economy: No other nation crews so many merchant ships
Feb 16th 2019 https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/02/16/unsung-filipino-seafarers-powe...

A CROWDED PAVEMENT alongside Luneta, a park in Manila next to the old Spanish walled city, bears witness every day to how Filipinos make the world go round. This is where recruiters from manning agencies that represent international shipowners go in search of crew. They put out battered tables as recruiting stations, or they wander among the throng of unemployed Filipino seamen, holding up signs headed “urgent”. Wanted are mates, engineers, radio officers, fitters and cooks; a valid American visa is often essential.

Parts of the Philippine archipelago have sent out seafarers since long before Spanish galleons plied between Manila and Acapulco. Modern-day Filipino mariners came to prominence with the oil crises of the 1970s, when the world’s shipping lines could no longer afford Western crews. Today, more than nine-tenths of global trade (by weight) is carried by sea, on some 100,000 merchant vessels drawing on a pool of 1.2m mariners. Of these, well over a quarter, 378,000, are Filipinos—by far the biggest number by country of origin. On any day, perhaps 250,000 Filipino mariners are at sea. If they stayed at home, the world economy would convulse.