Washington-area federal employees and contractors with Top Secret security clearances make more money on average than their colleagues in other states, according to a recent nationwide study.

In the state category, the average salary for those working in Washington with a Top Secret security clearance or higher hit $80,380 during this past year, up from $78,813 between 2006 and 2007, reported the latest annual Security Clearance Jobs Salary Survey from ClearanceJob.com, an Internet-based job board for professionals with U.S. government security clearances.

Virginia ranked second with an average salary of $78,043 in the 2008 poll, up from $76,090 in the previous year's survey. In Virginia's Crystal City, an area in Arlington that is home to many government agencies and contractors, salaries jumped to $90,714 from $73,710 in 2007, while Herndon, Va., reported the single highest paid salary at $94,118 in the D.C. metro area.

The national average salary for those in the same category crested at $72,803, up from $68,139 in 2007. The survey ranked the salaries of those holding clearances by state (including the District of Columbia), clearance level, satisfaction, job category and gender. The survey polled 4,200 government employees and contractors between March 20, 2007, and Feb. 20, 2008.

Massachusetts, Colorado and New Jersey -- states reliant on military contracting, engineering jobs and the technology industry -- rounded out the top five highest average salaries by state, the survey showed.

"This is a job seekers' market," said Even Lesser, director and founder of ClearanceJobs.com. "With the quality of qualified candidates in much shorter supply than the number of open doors, wages for cleared candidates are expected to continue rising."

Nationally, government contractors with security clearances earned an "average of 22 percent higher salaries than their government employee counterparts," the survey also reported. Contractors on average earned $80,688 compared to a cleared government employee, who earned $63,153 between March 2007 and Feb. 2008. As in the 2006-2007 survey, security-cleared women still earned 89 cents to every security-cleared man's dollar.

When comparing jobs that require security clearances to nonclearance jobs, the latest survey found that "among the 20 highest paid job categories, security-cleared candidates earn an average of $19,138, or 22 percent, more than their closest noncleared peers."

Nationally, average salaries by clearance level were expected to continue rising, as stricter requirements reduce the pool of possible candidates at the highest security levels, the survey indicated. But the highest salaries of those with the highest clearances, for instance Energy Department employees working with atomic or nuclear-related materials with "Q" or "L" clearances -- clearances that rank equal to the Defense Department's most sensitive categories -- may have peaked.

"While Department of Energy-cleared candidates still show the highest earnings, reported salary levels remained flat between surveys," the study concluded, noting that Energy employees with security clearances on average earned $100,600, the figure reported in the 2007-2008 survey.

The salaries of employees with the lowest clearances -- Confidential -- grew the fastest over the past year from $56,522 to $64,375. That's good news for those salary earners with confidential clearances looking for a higher paying job.

"With a 12 percent increase since last surveyed, many defense contractors have alluded that they are finding it easier to 'upgrade' Confidential-cleared candidates to higher clearance levels, making them valid potential hires," said the survey.

Of the 2007-2008 respondents, 59 percent said they were satisfied with their salaries. In last year's survey, 60 percent reported being unsatisfied. In the latest study, 67 percent reported job satisfaction "primarily due to their optimism about the growth of the U.S. defense industry and relative confidence in job security," the survey said.

The Defense Department says it will speed up how quickly it removes contractor employees from the contract specialist role.

The move comes in the wake of a Government Accountability Office report that was critical of how many contract employees are working for the Army's Contracting Center of Excellence.

In a letter to GAO that was part of a report released this week, Shay Assad, director of Defense Procurement, Acquisition Policy and Strategic Sourcing, said the Army would eliminate the role of contractors at the center within 180 days or move work to other parts of the government where federal employees would perform it.

The GAO report, "Army Case Study Delineates Concerns with Use of Contractors as Contract Specialists," took issue with the role of contractors on several fronts.

The areas targeted include the extent to which contractors are used, risks such as organizational conflicts of interests that arise from using contractors, the higher cost of using contractors and the appropriateness of the contract vehicles used to hire the contractors.

Contractors supported 24 percent to 30 percent of all procurement actions from fiscal 2005 through 2007, GAO said. Auditors found that on 42 contract actions at the center, contractors had prepared documents, such as contract modifications, and had received past-performance questionnaires and technical evaluations and assisted in preparing statements of work.

However, the contracting officers at the center told GAO that although contractors can recommend a course of action, the officers make the final decisions on contract matters, such as contract awards.

One of GAO's concerns was the Army's use of contractors as a stopgap measure to fill vacancies and not as part of an overall strategy.

The center "has not taken into consideration what constitutes a reasonable and feasible balance of the number of government versus contractor personnel or developed a training program for its permanent government employees," GAO said.

Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council and a columnist for Washington Technology, said the GAO report shouldn't be seen as a call to stop using contractors.

"GAO didn't say they shouldn't be using contractors," Soloway said. "The real issue is when you do contracting like this, you need extra oversight and diligence. The question is, Does [DOD] have the core capabilities to do that?"

The bigger problem is the lack of government contracting employees. DOD has the positions but hasn't been able to fill them, Soloway said.

The idea of moving contracting work away from the center to other parts of the government won't work because "there is a shortage across all of government," he said. "This is an issue that isn't going to go away."

CACI International Inc. is the contractor with the bulk of private-sector contract specialists at the Army center.

In a statement released Wednesday, CACI said it supports the government's efforts to better define the roles and responsibilities of contractors. "CACI has consistently provided our armed forces with good value," the company said in a statement. "CACI's resources also allow our military leaders the enormous budgeting flexibility to utilize our expertise for extended missions or short periods of time."

Although GAO did not find examples of improper decisions, it did criticize the process for mitigating organizational conflicts of interest.

CACI told GAO that it keeps its business unit doing the contract support work separate from the rest of the company.

For example, the company physically separates employees from the other groups and keeps proposal databases separate. Bonuses and other financial incentives for the contracting unit are not tied to the performance of other operating units.

Contractor employees working with the Army are trained to report potential conflicts of interest to their supervisors, and employees are then removed. CACI and center employees gave GAO several examples of when this process worked, according to the report.

But GAO said the process relies too heavily on individuals reporting problems, and government managers might not have enough visibility into the process.

In his response to the GAO report, Assad said he agreed with the recommendations and was taking action. The center has already reduced the number of contractor employees from 31 in 2007 to 17 as of Feb. 26. The center is also working to implement recommendations of the Gansler Commission. Its November report recommended hiring more contracting officers, training them better, making contracting a career track and improving contracting tools.

"I view this to be a matter of grave concern," Assad said.

 

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