If you’re a professional with an active federal security clearance, 2017 may be your ‘Show Me the Money’ year.
Several factors are pushing salaries up:
First, the OPM Breach caused some professionals to leave the market and started a spiral of slower than ever processing times.
Can you say, 500,000? Because that’s the size of the current backlog of background investigations. That means if a company needs to sponsor a new investigation, they may need to wait up to a year before they can put that person to work. But, if you already have a security clearance you can start today. Some companies are paying a premium for talent they can put to work faster.
Second, Insider Threats caused the Department of Defense to reduce the number of clearances by 25 percent.
Economics 101 – Supply less than demand equals higher salaries.
Third, nearly a quarter of defense industry professionals are eligible for retirement in 2018.
Called the ‘graying of the defense workforce’ the massive retirement eligibility means the government needs to attract new talent to fill those positions – and it’s competing with a very stable commercial sector.
Fourth, demand for cyber talent is surging, and the government is competing with the private sector.
Software developers, engineers, information assurance analysts, cloud architects – these are just a few of the high-demand career fields bumping defense salaries up. And they’re also creating seismic income disparity between occupations.
Finally, a new presidential administration is here, and is promising a bigger, better military – it’s gonna be HUGE!
Only time will tell what the new presidential administration means for government employment overall, but if the current Senate budget offers any clue, defense spending is going up – and that means salaries will, as well, as companies win new contracts and put new talent to work.
