You have a cleared seat open. The contract needs a body on it. And the clock is running on a position you cannot bill until someone with the right access sits down.

This is where a cleared veteran hire pays off. A veteran who already holds an active clearance can skip the part that costs you the most. That part is time. You do not wait months for an investigation. You do not pay to sponsor one. The person can start working sooner.

But how much is that worth in real dollars? Most teams guess. They feel the savings but cannot put a number on it. That number matters when you defend a hire to finance or build a sourcing case. This guide gives you the model. You plug in your own numbers. No magic figure. Just a framework you can run for any open cleared role.

Why Does a Transferable Clearance Save Money at All?

A security clearance is not a one-time stamp. It is an investigation, an adjudication, and ongoing checks. When you hire someone who does not have one, you pay for all of that. You also wait for it.

The U.S. government runs these checks through the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). Sensitive roles need a Tier 3 investigation. That maps to Secret access. The most sensitive roles need a Tier 5. That maps to Top Secret. A Tier 5 takes more work and more time than a Tier 3.

A veteran leaving the service often already went through this. The military sponsored their clearance. The investigation is done. The adjudication is done. If that clearance is still active, you can use it. You skip the wait and the sponsorship cost.

That is the whole savings story in one line. You buy time you would otherwise have to pay for and wait for.

What Goes Into the Cost Model?

The savings come from three buckets. Add them up and you have your number. Here is the simple form.

Savings = (investigation cost you avoid) + (months of delay you avoid x your monthly cost or revenue per seat) + (lower turnover value).

Let me walk each bucket. None of these need a fancy spreadsheet. You already track most of the inputs.

Bucket 1: The investigation cost you skip

When you sponsor a new clearance, you pay a billing rate to DCSA. That rate is not fixed forever. DCSA publishes its rates each year, and they change. A Tier 5 costs far more than a Tier 3.

Do not hardcode an old number here. Pull the current rate from the DCSA billing rates page or ask your security officer for this year's figure. Whatever it is, a cleared veteran hire lets you avoid it. That is a direct, hard dollar you do not spend.

Bucket 2: The months of delay you avoid

This is the big one. And it is the one most teams miss.

A new investigation does not finish overnight. It can take many months. A Top Secret case can run close to a year or more. The government has worked to speed this up, and timelines have improved. But it is still slow. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged that the official timeliness data has its own reporting problems. So do not trust a single headline number. Plan for a long wait and price it.

Every month that seat sits empty has a cost. Two ways to price it:

• Cost view: the loaded labor you planned to spend on that role, sitting idle, or covered by overtime on your current team.
• Revenue view: on a cleared contract, an empty cleared seat is lost billing. The seat is funded. You just cannot fill it. That is revenue walking out the door each month.

Pick the view that fits your shop. A staffing firm or GovCon prime usually uses the revenue view. The number is bigger and it is real.

Bucket 3: The turnover you avoid

Veterans tend to stay. A hire who stays longer saves you the cost of replacing them. Replacement is not cheap. You pay to recruit, screen, onboard, and ramp all over again. On a cleared role you may pay for a new clearance too.

This bucket is softer than the first two. You will not nail it to the dollar. But put a directional value on it. Even a small reduction in churn on a hard-to-fill cleared role is worth real money over a year.

How Do You Run the Math? (A Worked Example)

Let me show the model with round, made-up numbers. These are illustrative only. Swap in your own.

Say you have a cleared seat funded at a revenue rate of $20,000 a month. That is what the seat bills when filled. Now say a fresh investigation would take six months before a new hire could start cleared work.

Run the delay bucket: six months x $20,000 = $120,000 in revenue you could not bill while you waited. A cleared veteran who starts in three weeks captures most of that back. That is the number that wins the meeting.

Now add the investigation cost you skip. Call it a placeholder until you confirm the current DCSA rate. On a Top Secret case it is a meaningful sum, not a rounding error.

Then add a directional turnover value. If a typical replacement on this role costs you a few months of recruiting and ramp, even a modest drop in churn adds thousands more.

Stack the three. The delay bucket usually dwarfs the rest. That is the point. The clearance saves you a clearance fee, but it really saves you the wait.

Why Is the Time Bucket So Often Missed?

Finance teams see the clearance fee because it shows up as a line item. You write a check to DCSA. It is easy to point at.

The delay cost hides. It does not show up as a bill. It shows up as a seat that earns nothing, a deadline that slips, or a current team working overtime to cover the gap. None of that lands on one invoice. So it gets left out of the math.

That is a mistake. The delay is the most expensive part. When you build the case for a cleared veteran hire, lead with the delay number. It is the one that makes leadership lean in.

If you want help framing this for a skeptical CFO, the internal business case for veteran hiring walks through the pitch step by step. The clearance savings slot right into it.

What Do You Need to Confirm Before You Trust the Number?

The model is only as good as your inputs. Check these before you take the number to anyone.

Is the clearance still active? A clearance can go dormant after someone leaves the service. Most stay eligible for reinstatement for a period of time. But you cannot assume. Confirm the level and the status through your security officer.

Is it the right level? A Secret does not cover a Top Secret seat. Match the clearance to the role you need filled. A reinvestigation or upgrade still costs time and money.

Is your delay estimate honest? Do not lowball the wait to make a different hire look better. Use a realistic timeline. The data on government timeliness is imperfect, so build in a buffer.

Are your seat numbers real? Use the actual funded rate or loaded labor for that seat. Borrowed industry averages weaken the case. Your own numbers win.

A note on the reinstatement window

Here is a detail that trips up a lot of hiring teams. An active clearance and an eligible-for-reinstatement clearance are not the same thing. A veteran who left the service a few months ago may still hold a current clearance. A veteran who has been out less than two years may have a clearance that lapsed but can be reinstated without a full new investigation. Confirm the exact window with your security officer, since eligibility depends on current DCSA guidelines.

The reinstatement path is faster and cheaper than starting from scratch. But it is not free, and it is not instant. It still takes some processing time and a check that the person has stayed eligible. So when you run your model, sort candidates into three groups: active and current, lapsed but reinstatable, and needs a brand new investigation. Each group has a different savings number.

The active group saves you the most. The reinstatement group saves you a lot but not everything. The new-investigation group saves you nothing on clearance, so for those candidates the case rests on the other reasons to hire a veteran. Your security officer can tell you which group a candidate falls into. Ask before you promise leadership a number.

Where Does the Cleared Veteran Talent Come From?

The math only helps if you can find the people. Cleared veterans are a real pool, but they move fast once they separate. The good ones get picked up quickly.

Veterans leaving roles in intelligence, cyber, security, and many technical fields often carry an active clearance out the door. They have the access and the work history to back it. If you hire in cybersecurity or corporate security and public safety, this pool runs deep.

To source them, you need a way to screen for the clearance and the skills at once. A recruiter's checklist for screening veteran applicants helps you read a military resume and spot the access fast.

Best Military Resume gives you direct reach into this pool. We add over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, and have built more than 60,000 resumes for the military community. Many of those candidates hold or recently held a clearance. That is a steady, fresh supply of cleared talent you can hire against.

How Does This Fit the Rest of the Hiring Case?

Clearance savings are one piece. They are the sharpest piece for a GovCon or defense shop. But they are not the whole story.

Veterans bring more than access. They bring tested leadership, low turnover, and a work ethic that shows up on day one. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the strength of the veteran workforce, and the veteran unemployment rate sat at 3.0% in 2024, below the nonveteran rate. These are people in demand for good reason.

If you want the full return picture beyond clearance, the ROI of hiring veterans breaks down what military hires give back. And there are hard-dollar incentives too. The hiring incentives beyond WOTC guide covers tax credits and programs that stack on top of the clearance savings.

Run the clearance math first because it is the clearest number. Then layer the rest. The full case is strong.

The Bottom Line on Cleared Veteran Savings

A cleared veteran hire saves you a clearance fee. That part is easy to see. But the bigger save is time. You skip the months of waiting for an investigation, and on a funded cleared seat, those months are pure lost revenue.

Build your model from three buckets: the fee you skip, the delay you skip, and the turnover you avoid. Use your own numbers, not borrowed averages. Confirm the clearance is active and at the right level before you count it. Then bring the delay number to leadership, because that is the one that lands.

The hard part is finding the cleared people before someone else does. That is where we come in. Best Military Resume connects you to a growing pool of cleared and recently separated veterans, with over 1,000 new profiles added every month. If you want access to that talent, partner with us and we will help you fill those cleared seats faster.