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Boston Business Journal - by Jackie Noblett Journal staff
The diminishing number of American students graduating with science and engineering degrees has raised a red flag from the area defense industry, which is warning that the trend could crimp an already small pool of candidates eligible to perform classified research.
As Massachusetts positions itself as an attractive area for defense work, concerns about the number of workers with government security clearances could hamper the state's ability to get lucrative contracts to perform sensitive tasks. Some industry leaders say if the labor pool shrinks, so will the local defense industry.
"It is a reoccurring theme that we are challenged with getting the workers we need to make sure that the technology we do have in the state stays here," said Suzanne Daniels, director of development at BAE Systems in Lexington and former interim director of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative. She said that MassDTI is rallying the industry to have open conversations with the academic institutions about skills requirements.
"If we were not attentive to (the issue), we would really run the risk of not being competitive to bid on projects," said Paul Clegg, director of hiring at Waltham-based Raytheon Co.
Raytheon, which secured over $10 billion in defense contracts in 2006, said it only hires people with government-security clearances. The company estimates that 75,000 candidates meet that requirement nationally.
The competition for this special type of worker spans the country, as defense clusters in Virginia, Ohio and California vie for top-level candidates. Massachusetts companies have made steps to sweeten the deal for prospective employees, and local salary increases for cleared individuals rose more in 2007 than in any other state, according to research by Des Moines, Iowa, defense-recruiting firm Clearancejobscom.
"There is no doubt that the number of foreign students and baby boomers retiring has affected the pool of candidates," said Evan Lesser of Clearancejobs, noting that his job bank has far more open security clearance jobs than the total number of qualified candidates.
The process of getting a security clearance can be long and complicated. A worker applies for a clearance level -- confidential, secret or top secret -- required by specific jobs. The candidate fills out a lengthy application and federal investigators check it against credit and criminal-history databases. Background checks into prior employment and personal references are also par for the course.
The federal Office of Personnel Management estimates it cleared about 790,000 people nationally last year to perform classified tasks in the military, government and private sector. Since it took full control of clearance investigations in 2005, it has tried to speed up the process.
A February 2007 report estimated it took an average of 205 days to complete an investigation, but the OPM now estimates that the average case for a confidential or secret clearance takes a little over 60 days, although that estimate is questioned by Clearancejobs and other experts.
The state has 2,535 companies that perform work for the defense department and the Department of Homeland Security.
About 32,000 local jobs are directly dependent on defense contracts.
Concerns about security clearances has raised the eyebrows of Congress. The House Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee had a hearing on the issue last week, and is encouraging agencies to work together to make improve
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