Assessing the Prospects for Employment in an Expansion of US Aquaculture

The United States imports 60 percent of its seafood, leading to a 7 billion seafood trade deficit. To mitigate this deficit, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has promoted the expansion of U.S. production of seafood by aquaculture. NOAA projects that the future expansion of a U.S. aquaculture industry could produce as much as 5 billion in annual sales. NOAA claims that one of the benefits of this expansion would be an increase in employment from 180,000 to 600,000 persons (100,000 indirect jobs and 500,000 direct jobs). Sources of these estimates and the assumptions upon which they are based are unclear, however. The Marine Aquaculture Task Force (MATF), an independent scientific panel, has been skeptical of NOAA's employment estimates, claiming that its sources of information are weak and based upon dubious assumptions. If NOAA has exaggerated its employment projections, then the benefits from an expansion of U.S. aquaculture production would not be as large as projected. y study examined published estimates of labor productivity from the domestic and foreign aquaculture of a variety of species, and I projected the potential increase in employment associated with a 5 billion aquaculture industry, as proposed by NOAA. Results showed that employment estimates will range from only 40,000 to 128,000 direct jobs by 2025 as a consequence of the proposed expansion. Consequently, NOAA may have overestimated its employment projections-?possibly by as much as 170 percent, implying that NOAA's employment estimate requires further research or adjustment.