An excellent little article about the value of the clearance. It’s cool to see salaries starting to edge up a little in Afghanistan as well, and it is about time. All of this just emphasizes that if you can get any job you can that will sponsor you for a clearance, do it.(thats if you have never had a clearance) More and more these days, companies want guys with clearances before they will look at you.
There is another interesting angle with the clearance deal. Perhaps one of the positive outcomes of requiring clearances of contractors, is the fact that they have to really watch their finances and everything if they want to maintain it. That is good, because that actually helps to filter out the less than desirable types. It does nothing for increasing the quality of leadership or skill set for the job, but at least we have guys that have to keep their personal and financial business at home squared away, for fear of losing their clearance.
Now if we can get a red card/database system going, where internationally recognized standards that each contractor has are kept, along with clearance level and status, then we are getting somewhere. I hope that one day, I will show up on contract, and at anytime a government or military professional can ask me for my red card qualifications so I can prove that I am who I say I am, then that would be cool. That is what I had for fire fighting in the fire services, and it was an outstanding system. –Matt
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Value of security clearance rises more slowly
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
May 19, 2009
Salaries for government and contractor employees with security clearances continue to rise, yet that growth is cooling off, according to a survey by ClearanceJobs.com, an online job board for job seekers with security clearances.
Despite the slowdown in other parts of the economy, professionals with security clearances working for the federal government or government contractors have seen their average salaries increase nearly 2 percent — to $73,961 — in the last year and a half, ClearanceJobs.com found in its annual survey.
However, “salaries are leveling off a little bit,” said Evan Lesser, founder and director of the site.
“A few years ago, we were seeing 5 [to] 7 percent per year increases — very, very high. And a lot of candidates were receiving things like $10,000, $15,000 [or] $20,000 signing bonuses. … It was very hot and heavy a couple years ago, but that’s leveled off a bit. I think that employers are a little bit more in control now than they were in the past. In the past it was definitely a candidate’s market where they could command any salary they wanted.”
More than 5,000 people, working for contractors or directly for the government, responded to the voluntary survey between Feb. 21, 2008, and April 26, 2009. Data was based solely on participants’ responses.
The salary gap between female and male employees with security clearances is shrinking, though not erased, according to the survey. Women with security clearances are earning about 92 percent of the salaries for men with security clearances, according to the survey. In the previous year’s survey, women reported earning about 88 percent of the salaries for male workers with security clearances.
That same gap exists in the general population, where women earn 88 percent of what male workers earn, according to 2007 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Women in the defense industry are much closer to making what men make than outside of the defense industry,” Lesser said. “The security clearances definitely have some type of leveling effect more than [for] someone outside these positions.”
Another finding was that the gap between government and contractor workers’ salaries continues to grow, which could make President Barack Obama’s goal of replacing more than 33,000 defense contractors with lower-paid government workers more difficult. Government contractors with security clearances earn on average $83,212 a year, about $20,000 more than government employees with security clearances.
“It’s been an upward trend for years now, and we’ll be interested to see if salaries level off and then possibly the gap lessens,” as Obama moves to get more employees on the civil services payroll, Lesser said.
The economic slowdown has affected the government contracting sector less than other parts of the economy, Lesser said.
“We’ve seen hiring continue at a fairly regular pace over the past year and a half” for employees with security clearances, Lesser said, adding that job postings to his site have increased 25 percent. Government contractors in non-defense areas are moving more toward defense, he added. “The number of companies [offering jobs requiring security clearances] has increased as well. We’re finding a lot of staffing and recruiting companies getting into defense that had not been into it before.”
Washington, D.C., and the surrounding metro area is still the hot spot for jobs requiring security clearances. Survey respondents with jobs in Washington had the highest average salary in the survey — $82,874. Workers in Virginia followed with the second-highest average salary at $80,135. Salaries increased about 3 percent in each of these areas from the previous year.
The gap between salaries for cleared employees working in Iraq and those in Afghanistan has narrowed, reflecting the renewed focus on operations in Afghanistan, ClearanceJobs.com said. Salaries for workers in Afghanistan grew 7 percent to $106,321. In Iraq, they increased only slightly to $106,839 on average.
Management-level positions requiring security clearances pay $101,720 on average, according to the survey. An entry-level employee with security clearance and less than two years of experience earns $45,811 on average.
ClearanceJobs.com funded the survey. The site funds its operations through fees from employers posting job openings to the site.
Tell us what you think. E-mail Antonie Boessenkool.
Story here.