Cleared Employees’ Paychecks Grow Slowly Demand for employees with security clearances remains strong, but their salaries are barely increasing and signing bonuses have all but disappeared, according to ClearanceJobs.com, a job-matching website. “The global recession is making employers a little bit more frugal,” said the company’s director, Evan Lesser. ClearanceJobs’ survey found that average salaries for cleared employees have grown by less than 2% in the past year and a half, to $73,961. “In previous years we had seen as much as 7%” salary growth, Lesser said. Signing bonuses, which were common in past years, “have fallen by the wayside,” he added. The average salary for contractor employees with clearances, $83,212, was roughly $20,000 more than that of federal employees with comparable clearances. Lesser reported “very strong” growth in demand for cleared workers, both in postings on the website and in the number of recruiting and staffing companies moving into the field. He said the recession is drawing new companies into the federal market. While salaries and job opportunities are highest in the Washington, DC, area, “there is no bad place in the country for security-clearance jobs,” he said. The averages include all types of cleared jobs. For executive positions, the average salary was $130,293; for management level, $101,720; and for entry-level jobs, $45,811. Data for the salary survey was collected from more than 5,000 people who registered on the ClearanceJobs website between early 2008 and early 2009.