[lesuorac]

> I don't think security clearance is a good analogy as they are administered by the government itself. You may be sponsored by a private company, but I believe that work has to trace back to a government contract.

To be clear, "sponsored by a private company" involves that private company paying either the government or some other private company money for you to get your clearance (not too sure how the money exactly moves about).

Sure you need to be working a job that actually requires a clearance to have one (but effectively there is a grace period if you get fired/quit). But if Company A and Company B both have a job that requires Tier 5 then you can move from A->B no problem. IIUC, the Jet example is even worse (for job mobility) because it's a rating for a plane so you'd need to go from a pilot at A to a pilot of that plane at B while for the DoD you could go from a programmer to a manager or janitor and it's all Tier 5.

[bumby]

The vast majority of security investigations are done by the govt Office of Personnel Management and paid for by other government agencies with appropriated funds. What contractors may often pay for is hiring someone and then paying their salary while they wait for the clearance to go through (i.e., they pay for them to do something else while they wait for the clearance to do the job they were actually hired for). But that's more about their hiring pipeline than the cost of clearance.