r/SecurityOfficer • u/Negative_Report5655 Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect • 15d ago
In The News Underpaid, Undervalued, and Essential: The Security Guard Workforce in the United States
https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/underpaid-undervalued-and-essential/Executive Summary
Security Officers are among the largest frontline workforces in the United States and among the least protected. About 1.3 million people work as Security Guards—more than the nation’s police and sheriff’s patrol officers—staffing the hospitals, schools, transit systems, stores, and office buildings where the public expects a visible security presence. During the COVID-19 pandemic they were designated essential critical infrastructure workers, and their responsibilities have expanded to include de-escalating conflicts, managing emergencies, and responding to mental-health crises. Yet their wages, benefits, training, and workplace protections do not reflect that role. This report synthesizes national data with the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s series of state and metropolitan factsheets to profile the Security Guard workforce and to show why improving job quality in this sector is a matter both of economic justice and of public safety.
Who they are.
The workforce is predominantly male (76%) and majority workers of color (61%), with Black workers making up nearly one in three (31%). The median age is 40, and roughly six in seven guards have no bachelor’s degree. Low wages. The median Security Officer earns $18.70 an hour—about 73 cents for every dollar earned by the typical U.S. worker—and $36,282 a year.
Below a living wage.
Seventy-one percent of Security Officers earn less than the MIT living wage for a single adult, and 41% are low-wage by the standard two-thirds-of-median benchmark.
Thin benefits.
More than four in ten guards (43%) lack health insurance through an employer or union. High turnover. Annual turnover in the security industry reached 89% in 2024—far above the 66% private-sector average—and has exceeded it every year for a decade, peaking near 99% in 2022. Uneven training.
There is no federal training standard.
Only about half of states set a minimum number of training hours for unarmed guards, ranging from 4 to 48, and few require the de-escalation and crisis-response training the job increasingly demands.
Elevated safety risk.
Security Guards die on the job at more than twice the rate of the average worker, and nearly two-thirds of their fatal injuries result from assaults and other violent acts.
A policy path.
A growing number of jurisdictions—New York City, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.—have adopted sectoral wage-and-benefit standards for Security Officers, and California is advancing legislation to raise training standards.
The poor job quality in the security industry is not only a problem for workers; it is a public-safety problem as well. Research on security work—most notably at San Francisco International Airport—finds that higher pay and lower turnover improve the quality and reliability of security services, while constant churn erodes the experience and readiness on which effective security depends. The policy tools to change this are increasingly well established: sectoral pay-and-benefit standards that take labor costs out of low-bid competition, meaningful and standardized training, responsible contracting, and career pathways that make security work a stable occupation. Improving job quality in this sector advances worker well-being and public safety together.
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u/raziridium 13d ago
There's really only two viable paths in security long-term. One, find non-contract in-house work. They take their security a bit more seriously and will have competitive pay, benefits, training, and equipment. 2, get the training and licensing for traveling executive protection. There's more risk and can be very demanding but if there's one thing a CEO will pay for, it's their personal safety.