Labor shortages have become a familiar constraint for advanced manufacturers. In the defense aerospace sector, however, skilled labor is only half the equation. Increasingly, the competitive advantage isn’t simply finding engineers, machinists, software developers, or technicians—it’s finding workers who already possess security clearances.
That reality is reshaping where defense companies choose to locate.
Retired Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, former Commander of U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Bellevue, Nebraska,” argues that military installations create economic value far beyond the personnel stationed there.
“Offutt becomes an economic development asset in several ways,” Cotton told Area Development. “It transitions service members from the military back to the civilian workforce, and a lot of those service members have security clearances. When you can hire people who are already cleared, that’s very good for that company.”
That existing pool of cleared talent has become one of the least visible—but increasingly important—inputs in defense-related site selection.
If you’ve had to staff an advanced manufacturing facility during the past decade, you already understand how difficult it has become to recruit workers with strong mechanical aptitude. A generation that was once introduced to manufacturing through shop classes increasingly entered college-preparatory tracks instead, while manufacturers competed for a shrinking population of skilled tradespeople.
Defense contractors face an additional hurdle.
Not only must employees possess the technical skills to build advanced aircraft, ships, satellites, electronics, or weapons systems, many must also qualify for access to classified information. That process begins with U.S. citizenship and ends with a federal determination that an individual can be trusted to work on sensitive national security programs. Depending on the level of access required—from Confidential to Secret to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI)—the investigation can take six months to a year, with no guarantee of approval.
One of the first questions becomes: Where are the clearances?
For employers, the delay is expensive. While exact costs vary by program and position, contractors often continue paying employees while they perform only unclassified work—the industry’s so-called “fishbowl”—until the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency completes the investigation.
The pool of available talent is also remarkably small.
According to the most recent declassified federal data, approximately 1.38 million Americans hold active Top Secret clearances, while another 2.86 million possess Secret or Confidential clearances. Combined, roughly 4.24 million active clearances represent only about 1.3 percent of the U.S. population. Those numbers include not only defense industry employees, but also military personnel, intelligence professionals, and federal civilian workers.
The challenge has become even more acute since the early 2000s. Following high-profile espionage cases, including that of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the federal government tightened clearance management. Previously, workers could often maintain active clearances between classified assignments if additional work appeared likely. Today, clearances are generally allowed to lapse once program requirements end. Reinstating an inactive clearance is typically faster than conducting an entirely new investigation, but it still requires time and administrative review.
As defense spending expands, so does demand.
The United States now spends roughly $1.5 trillion annually on national defense, with approximately 12 percent directed toward classified programs. Yet the need for cleared workers extends well beyond so-called “black” programs. The F-35 Lightning II, for example, is itself an unclassified aircraft, but many of its software, sensors, and mission systems remain classified, requiring a substantial portion of the supplier network to employ cleared personnel.
The relevant measure is not military presence alone. It is alignment between the installation’s mission and the company’s workforce requirements.
For site selectors, that reality increasingly influences geography before incentives or real estate enter the discussion.
One of the first questions becomes: Where are the clearances?
Military installations, intelligence agencies, defense laboratories, and major prime contractors continuously generate and retain cleared workforces. Publicly available data, combined with defense employment and recruiting activity, suggests the nation’s deepest concentrations of cleared personnel remain clustered around Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Dallas-Fort Worth, Southern California, Florida’s defense corridor, Maryland, Colorado Springs, Seattle, Atlanta, and other major defense hubs.
Cotton believes that talent pipeline represents one of the military’s most underappreciated contributions to regional economies.
“It’s not only active-duty service members,” he said. “It’s their families, and it’s the civilian workforce that’s employed by the installation. Those people transition into industry, and companies benefit from hiring workers who already understand the mission and already hold the credentials they need.”
As the defense industrial base accelerates production of submarines, missiles, aircraft, autonomous systems, and advanced electronics, security clearances are becoming more than a hiring requirement.
They’re becoming a location factor.
