Low Standards Hurt Security Officers’ Ability To Make Ends Meet

Security officers perform essential services to keep people safe at office buildings, hospitals, government buildings, and corporate campuses. They also act as first responders in emergencies. Too often, however, security officers are paid low wages and do not receive employer-sponsored health benefits.

New Center for American Progress analysis of the American Community Survey (ACS) and Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) shows that:

• Security officers’ wages have flatlined over the past 15 years at around $17 per hour, only two-thirds of the median private sector wage, even as the cost of living has soared.
• Approximately 40 percent of security officers do not receive employer-provided health insurance, forcing 18 percent of all officers to rely on Medicaid to support themselves and their families.
• Poor compensation disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic officers, who account for a majority of workers in the occupation but earn around 10 percent less per hour than white security officers.

The growing popularity of contracting out security work to specialized security contracting firms is pushing occupational standards even lower. Instead of hiring security officers directly—meaning officers work for the business or organization that they protect—a growing number of corporations are turning to security contracting firms that are responsible for the hiring, training, and management of security officers. The security industry also faces high turnover,¹ diminishing workers’ ability to develop the skills needed to make them effective at protecting businesses and the public. According to the CAP analysis:

• Security officers employed by contracting firms account for 3 in 5 workers in the occupation.
• Officers employed by contracting firms—a majority of whom are Black or Hispanic—earn around 10 percent less in wages and are 15 percentage points less likely to receive health benefits than security officers who are directly employed by the firm they protect.
• Among contracted workers, working conditions vary by the size of the contracting company, with annual pay at smaller firms 9 percent lower than annual pay at the largest contractors.
• Turnover rates across the industry are more than 50 percent annually, and hiring and retention are concerns for businesses, which depend on skilled and experienced employees to offer effective security.²

Increasingly, cities and states are adopting wage and benefit standards for security guards that help improve the lives of working families, reduce disparities across the industry, and support a well-qualified essential workforce. However, standards vary considerably by jurisdiction and typically cover only a portion of the workforce. This report helps policymakers understand how low wages and the growing use of contractors adversely affect security officers as well as how strong and consistent wage standards can improve outcomes for workers and the public.

Security officers—of whom there were 1.2 million in the United States in 2023—are paid low wages compared with workers in the private sector as a whole.³ Figure 1 compares the median hourly earnings of security officers in 2022, the most recent year with available worker-level data, to the private sector median wage. While the typical private sector worker earned $24.04 per hour, the median security officer earned 29 percent less, or only $17.03 per hour.

Even as the cost of living has soared over the past 20 years, real wages for security officers have remained flat. Figure 2 shows the percentage change since 2003 in wages for security officers compared with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) index for the price of rent, adjusted for inflation. In 2003, a typical security officer earned $17.05 per hour in 2024 dollars, while the median security worker in 2022 earned two cents less at $17.03 per hour. By comparison, the cost of rent grew by 14.3 percent over this time period even when accounting for inflation. This means that wages are barely keeping up with rising inflation while living costs have risen even faster.

As a result, the wages paid to security officers are typically not sufficient to cover the cost of everyday living expenses, such as housing, food, health care, and transportation. According to the MIT living wage calculator, to support themselves and one child, a worker would need to earn $38.56 per hour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,⁴ $38.81 per hour Cleveland, Ohio,⁵ and $40.91 per hour in Richmond, Virginia.⁶ (see Figure 2)

Low wages for security officers have a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic workers, who make up the majority of the workforce. As shown in Figure 3, while white security officers earned a median of $18.27 per hour in 2022, Hispanic security officers earned a median of $16.83 per hour, and Black officers earned a median of $15.91 per hour. Low wages also adversely affect immigrants, who make up 15.9 percent of the security workforce.⁷

The problem of low wages has grown as more security officers are contracted out rather than hired directly by the businesses or organizations they protect. CAP’s analysis of ACS data shows that nearly 3 in 5 security workers were employed by security contracting firms in 2023, while in 2004 contracted security workers made up less than half of the workforce. (see Figure 4) Many employers turn to contractors in order to reduce costs, but lower costs are often achieved through lower wages and worse working conditions for workers at security contractors.⁸

The heavy use of security contractors has helped keep wages stagnant for security officers, because contractors tend to pay lower wages than companies directly employing officers for the same work. Figure 5 compares the median hourly earnings of security officers who work directly for the employer they protect with those of security officers who work for contractors. While direct employees earned $18.59 per hour in 2022, officers employed by security contractors earned 9.5 percent less, or $16.83 per hour. Lower wages at security contractors disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic workers, who make up 60.2 percent of the security contractor workforce.

Security officers frequently do not have access to employer-provided health insurance, a problem worsened by the use of security contractors that offer fewer benefits for their employees compared with businesses that hire their own security officers.⁹ Overall, 39.1 percent of security officers lack access to a health insurance plan through their employer or a union. As shown in Figure 6, almost one-third, or 29.4 percent, of full-time security officers who work directly for the business or organization they protect did not have a health insurance plan provided by their employer or union. At contractors, the problem is even worse, with nearly half of all full-time security officers, or 45.9 percent, lacking health insurance through their employer or union.

The lack of access to health insurance forces a significant number of security officers to rely on Medicaid. According to ACS data, 17.8 percent of all security officers were enrolled in Medicaid in 2023, compared with only 9.9 percent of private sector workers overall. (see Figure 7) Because direct employers are more likely to offer health insurance plans, fewer security officers who work directly for the business or organization they protect have health insurance through Medicaid (12.9 percent) compared with security officers who work for contractors (21 percent).

Many security workers will likely face greater insurance costs due to cuts in Medicaid funding under the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act.¹⁰ A previous CAP analysis found that a worker supporting a family of four with Medicaid and earning $33,000 per year—just below the median wage for a full-time security worker¹¹—will face up to $1,650 in increased out-of-pocket insurance costs.¹²

Among security officers employed by a contractor, working conditions vary by firm size, with significantly lower annual pay at smaller firms. The security contracting industry is dominated by a few large contractors: 71 percent of contracted security workers are employed by companies with more than 250 employees, according to QWI data. Large contractors tend to offer higher wages than smaller contractors: Contractors with fewer than 250 employees pay their workers 8.8 percent less annually on average.

All of these problems contribute to high turnover in the industry. According to CAP analysis of QWI data, in 2023, annual turnover in the security industry reached 50.8 percent, compared with 38.4 percent for the private sector as a whole. High turnover rates not only increase staffing costs as new workers need to be hired and trained, but they also diminish workers’ ability to build skills that make them more effective on the job. With turnover a major ongoing issue for security contractors, several industry publications¹³ and consultants have recommended pay increases to help combat the problem.¹⁴

Increasingly, cities and states are adopting wage standards, such as prevailing wages, to ensure that wages and benefits for security officers and other private sector jobs that are supported by government spending do not undercut market standards; to standardize compensation across a sector; and to help close racial pay gaps and promote good value on public investments.¹⁵ In the security sector, wage and benefit standards can also help close disparities among directly employed and contracted workers and ensure that the increasing reliance on contracting firms does not further erode working conditions across the industry.

Prevailing wage laws set the basic hourly rate of wages and benefits paid to workers with similar job responsibilities in a given geography. For example, a security officer covered by the federal Service Contract Act, which was enacted in 1965 to ensure that workers employed by federal service contractors are paid market wages, would currently earn at least $24.76 per hour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin;¹⁶ $22.54 in Cleveland, Ohio;¹⁷ and $23.61 in Richmond, Virginia,¹⁸ in total compensation.¹⁹

Several states, including New York,²⁰ Illinois,²¹ and New Jersey,²² have adopted their own prevailing standards that apply to publicly supported security work, and Washington, D.C., went even further, extending standards to all commercial office buildings in 2008.²³ In justifying the law, the Council of the District of Columbia stated:²⁴

Any wage that is not sufficient to provide adequate maintenance and to protect health impairs the health, efficiency, and well-being of persons so employed, constitutes unfair competition against other employers and their employees, threatens the stability of industry, reduces the purchasing power of employees, and requires, in many instances, that their wages be supplemented by the payment of public moneys for relief or other public and private assistance.

Today, the law ensures that all security officers working at D.C. office buildings are paid $19.39 per hour plus $5.36 per hour in health and welfare benefits at a minimum.²⁵

In addition, unionization has helped security workers access affordable health insurance. SEIU Local 1’s contract in Indianapolis, for example, guarantees security workers have an employer-sponsored health insurance plan with premiums capped at $95 per month,²⁶ and SEIU Local 26’s contract in Minneapolis limits costs to $150 per month for a health insurance plan that covers the officer and his or her children.²⁷ By adopting a wage standard in areas where security workers are organizing, policymakers can help guarantee that government spending does not undercut rising market wages and benefits.

Research has shown that wage standard policies increase wages, improve access to benefits, reduce turnover, and improve job performance for service workers, including security workers. One study found that Illinois’ prevailing wage law for service contractors increased wages and access to employer-sponsored health insurance while reducing racial pay gaps for Black and Hispanic janitors.²⁸ Another found that the San Francisco airport’s living wage policy increased income for security screeners by 55 percent,²⁹ which in turn significantly reduced annual turnover.³⁰ Soon after implementation, the reduction in turnover had saved employers about $4,275 per employee replaced in restaffing costs and helped improve detections of security breaches.

Although security officers fulfill a crucial role protecting businesses and the public, they are paid low wages and offered few benefits—an issue that has worsened as businesses choose to contract out security work rather than hire their own security officers directly. These problems create an industry with high turnover that forces hundreds of thousands of workers to depend on public services for basic needs such as health insurance. Pro-worker policies such as wage standards and stronger unions can help alleviate these issues and ensure consistent pay and standards across the industry.

For this analysis, the author relied primarily on data from single-year samples of the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and published by IPUMS USA, covering 2004 through 2023.³¹ This survey offers earnings, hours, job classification, and demographic data on workers representative of the U.S. population.

The ACS classifies a worker’s occupation and industry using codes developed by the Census Bureau. The author identifies any respondent whose occupation is “security guards and gaming surveillance officer” as a security officer and identifies respondents as an employee at a security contractor if their industry is either “investigation and security services” or “services to buildings and dwellings, except landscaping services.”

In this analysis, the private sector workforce includes all respondents who reported working 50 to 52 weeks the previous year in any industry classification except public administration or the military. All income data and the rent index data in Figure 2 are adjusted for inflation to 2024 dollars using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).³²

The ACS asks respondents to describe whether they are of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin, with a second question that lacks these options prompting a respondent to indicate their race. For this analysis, the author refers to a respondent as Hispanic if the respondent stated that they are of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin in the former question and refers to a respondent as Black if they answered that they are Black or African American in the latter question. Because these questions are separate, they are not mutually exclusive, meaning some respondents describe themselves as both Black or African American and of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.

For data on earnings, turnover, and employment by employer size, the author relied on the Quarterly Workforce Indicators, also produced by the U.S. Census Bureau.³³ The Census Bureau surveys businesses each quarter to produce industrywide data on total employment and earnings. In this analysis, security contractors include all firms in the “Investigation and Security Services” industry described by NAICS code 5616. Earnings data vary compared with the ACS results because QWI data average earnings across all employees at a firm, regardless of occupation. Data for 2023 are averaged for all of that year.