Drive down Airways Boulevard in Memphis on a Tuesday morning and you’ll count Amazon delivery vans like they’re pigeons. There are dozens of them. Behind every warehouse door along that corridor, somebody posted a “Security Officer Needed” sign in the last three weeks. Half those signs have been up since April.
That’s the story of Tennessee’s security industry right now: some companies drowning in work they can’t staff, others watching phones that stopped ringing in March. The pandemic didn’t just disrupt the guard business. It cracked it clean in half.
The Boom Side
Memphis sits at the center of America’s shipping network, and COVID turned that geographic advantage into a hiring frenzy. FedEx’s World Hub at the airport runs three shifts around the clock, and the company added thousands of seasonal positions this spring that normally wouldn’t appear until October. Every one of those positions needs a security checkpoint. Every new warehouse needs access control officers, parking lot patrols, and somebody watching the camera feeds at 2 a.m.
Amazon’s presence in the Memphis metro has expanded so fast that security contractors are literally bidding against each other for the same pool of warm bodies. One contract security firm owner in Bartlett told me his company picked up four Amazon-related accounts between March and June. He’s staffed exactly two of them fully.
“I could hire 40 guards tomorrow if they walked through my door,” he said. “They won’t, because Walmart distribution is offering $15 an hour for forklift drivers and I’m stuck billing $14 and paying $10.50.”
Healthcare facilities tell a similar story. Hospitals across Tennessee added security posts at entrances for COVID screening. Baptist Memorial in Memphis, Vanderbilt in Nashville, UT Medical Center in Knoxville: all of them needed extra officers to manage visitor restrictions, mask enforcement, and the general anxiety that turns a hospital lobby into a pressure cooker. Some facilities doubled their security headcount between March and May.
The Tennessee Department of Labor reported that security guard job postings jumped 34% statewide from February to June. In Shelby County alone, the number was closer to 50%.
The Bust Side
Walk through downtown Nashville’s Lower Broadway on a Friday night and you’ll understand the other half of this story. Tootsie’s is dark. Robert’s Western World has its doors shut. The honky-tonks that normally pack thousands of tourists shoulder-to-shoulder sit empty or operate at a fraction of capacity under Phase 2 reopening guidelines.
Every one of those venues had security staff. Bouncers, door checkers, crowd management teams, parking lot monitors. Nashville’s entertainment security workforce, which nobody tracked in any official count, likely numbered in the low thousands during peak season. Most of those workers got laid off or furloughed by the end of March. As of this writing in early July, maybe a quarter are back.
Convention security took an even harder hit. The Music City Center in Nashville, which hosted 300+ events in 2019, has held almost none in 2020. The Renasant Convention Center in Memphis, the Knoxville Convention Center: same story. Event security companies that built their entire business model around conventions, trade shows, and corporate gatherings are fighting to survive.
I spoke with the owner of a Nashville event security company who asked not to be named. He employed 85 guards in February. He’s down to 11.
“We pivoted to construction site security and retail,” he said. “My guys who used to work Predators games are now doing overnight patrol at a strip mall in Antioch. It’s honest work, I guess.”
The Wage Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss
Here’s where the math gets ugly. Tennessee’s security guards earn between $10 and $12 an hour on average, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That number hasn’t moved much in three years. In Memphis, starting pay at most contract security firms sits right at $10, occasionally $10.50 for armed posts.
During a pandemic. While checking temperatures of strangers. While enforcing mask policies that make people hostile. For ten dollars an hour.
The federal $600 weekly unemployment supplement, which was still active through July, paid the equivalent of $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, on top of whatever state benefits a worker received. Simple arithmetic explains why hiring has been so difficult. A guard who got furloughed in March and collected unemployment plus the federal supplement took home more money staying home than standing at a warehouse gate in 95-degree Memphis heat.
Security company owners across the state are furious about this dynamic, and their frustration is understandable from a business perspective. They have contracts to fill. Clients are calling. The work exists. The workers don’t want it at these prices.
“You can’t blame the guards,” said a Chattanooga-based security manager who’s been in the industry for 22 years. “If someone offered me $15 an hour to stay home or $10.50 to stand in the sun and get yelled at by people who don’t want to wear masks, I know what I’d pick.”
The real question is why billing rates haven’t risen enough to support higher wages. Contract security in Tennessee typically bills clients between $18 and $22 per hour for an unarmed guard. After insurance, workers’ comp, uniforms, administrative overhead, and profit margin, there isn’t much room to raise guard pay without raising bill rates. And clients, many of whom are dealing with their own pandemic-related revenue losses, aren’t eager to pay more.
It’s a squeeze from both directions.
Turnover: The Number That Explains Everything
The American Society for Industrial Security has estimated annual turnover in the contract security industry at somewhere between 100% and 300%, depending on the market and the year. Tennessee sits comfortably in that range. Some Memphis-area firms report turning over their entire guard force every eight to ten months.
COVID made this worse. Guards who stayed through the spring often burned out by June. The combination of low pay, high risk, hostile interactions over mask enforcement, and the availability of unemployment benefits created a revolving door that spins faster than ever.
Training costs compound the problem. Tennessee requires 16 hours of training for unarmed security officers and additional coursework for armed guards. Every time a company loses a guard and hires a replacement, that training cost starts over. At high turnover rates, some firms spend nearly as much on training as they do on productive labor.
One Memphis security company owner showed me his numbers for the first half of 2020. He hired 67 guards between January and June. He currently employs 31. Thirty-six people came and went in six months, each one representing a uniform purchase, a background check fee, training hours, and administrative processing that generated zero long-term return.
The Geographic Split
Tennessee’s three grand divisions are experiencing this crisis differently, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s spent time in all three.
West Tennessee (Memphis metro): The logistics boom creates enormous demand. FedEx, Amazon, Nike’s distribution center in Frayser, International Paper, AutoZone’s headquarters: the corporate infrastructure here generates steady security work. Healthcare adds another layer. Crime rates in Memphis, which have climbed sharply this year, push residential and commercial property owners toward private security as well. The problem in West Tennessee isn’t demand. It’s supply.
Middle Tennessee (Nashville metro): The most volatile market. Nashville’s economy relied heavily on tourism, entertainment, and hospitality, all of which collapsed. Healthcare (HCA is headquartered here) and corporate office security provide some stability, and the construction boom that was already underway hasn’t fully stopped. Still, the net effect is negative. Nashville’s security industry is smaller today than it was in January.
East Tennessee (Knoxville/Chattanooga): A mixed picture. The University of Tennessee’s partial reopening plans for fall will generate campus security needs. Oak Ridge National Laboratory maintained operations throughout the pandemic, keeping its security workforce intact. Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant reopened in May with enhanced screening protocols. These are stabilizing forces, and they’ve kept East Tennessee’s security market from cratering the way Nashville’s did. Growth hasn’t been dramatic either, though.
What Happens Next
The federal unemployment supplement expires at the end of July, and that single policy change could reshape Tennessee’s security hiring market overnight. When the extra $600 disappears, the math changes for every furloughed guard who’s been earning more at home than on post.
Some industry veterans predict a flood of applicants in August. Others are less optimistic. They point out that many former guards found permanent work in other fields during the shutdown: delivery driving, grocery stocking, warehouse labor. Those workers aren’t coming back to $10.50 an hour.
The companies that survive this period will be the ones that figure out how to attract and retain guards in a market where the work is harder, the risk is higher, and the competition for low-wage labor has never been more intense. That might mean raising wages. It might mean offering health insurance, which most contract security firms in Tennessee don’t. It might mean treating guards like professionals instead of interchangeable bodies.
Or it might mean something else entirely. The security industry has a long history of finding ways to avoid addressing its labor problems, and there’s no particular reason to believe this crisis will be the one that forces real change. If Amazon keeps building warehouses and COVID keeps filling hospitals, Tennessee’s security companies will keep scrambling for guards. They’ll find enough to keep the lights on. They always do.
Whether those guards stick around past September is a different question.