Security Clearances: Contractor vs. Government Employee

Who holds the most national secrets? While scrutiny has focused in on the contract security-cleared workforce, government employees still outnumber contractors. For years the number of cleared personnel was largely unknown, but new reporting requirements mandated by Congress allow us to see trending over the past four years. Check out the charts here.

The data available from 2009-2014 also shows that there wasn’t a dramatic spike in security clearances granted post-9/11. The cleared workforce has grown, but the number of contractors with top secret security clearances has actually declined since 2009.

What do the numbers really mean? That any attempt to pin security clearance reform efforts on a numbers game aren’t likely to solve the problem.