A warehouse distribution center on Holmes Road in South Memphis posted an armed guard position six weeks ago. The pay is $19 an hour, full-time, with benefits. As of this week, the company has received three applications. One candidate failed the background check. Another couldn’t pass the firearms qualification. The third accepted a job with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office before the interview.
This is the armed guard market in Tennessee right now. Every contract security firm I’ve talked to in the past month tells some version of the same story: they can fill unarmed positions within two weeks, sometimes faster. Armed positions sit open for six to eight weeks, and some never get filled at all.
The shortage isn’t new. It’s been building since 2020. What’s changed in 2022 is that the pipeline of new armed guards has slowed to a trickle at the same time demand is surging. Memphis businesses want more armed security than ever. The supply of qualified, registered, available armed officers can’t keep up.
The Training Bottleneck
Becoming an armed security guard in Tennessee requires more than showing up and owning a gun. The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, through its Private Protective Services division, sets the rules. Right now, an armed guard candidate must complete a minimum of 48 hours of training before they can register.
That 48-hour requirement breaks down into specific categories. There’s classroom instruction on legal authority, use of force, report writing, and emergency procedures. There’s a mandatory firearms component that includes safety, handling, maintenance, and live-fire qualification. Candidates must score at least 70 percent on an approved silhouette target course.
And that’s about to get harder. TDCI announced on November 21 that new training requirements take effect January 1, 2023, under what the industry calls Dallas’s Law. The changes add more structure to guard training across the board, with increased continuing education requirements and tougher disciplinary measures for violations. For companies already struggling to get candidates through the existing 48-hour program, tighter requirements will slow the pipeline further.
Finding a training provider is its own challenge. Tennessee has a limited number of TDCI-approved training academies, and most of them are concentrated in Nashville and Knoxville. Memphis has a few options, but class schedules fill up fast. A candidate who decides in October to pursue armed guard registration might not get into a training class until December. By then, they’ve often found other work.
Background Check Delays
Even after a candidate completes training and passes the firearms qualification, they still need to clear a background check before TDCI issues their armed guard registration. That process has been running slow all year.
TDCI processes registrations through its CORE online system. The background check involves a criminal history review, and for armed positions, any felony conviction is an automatic disqualifier. So are certain misdemeanors involving violence, drugs, or dishonesty. The check also flags outstanding warrants, active protection orders, and other disqualifying conditions.
In a normal year, the turnaround from application submission to registration card in hand takes three to four weeks. In 2022, security company owners in Memphis report waiting five to seven weeks. One firm owner on Summer Avenue told me he lost two candidates during the waiting period because they took other jobs.
The delays aren’t unique to Tennessee. FBI fingerprint-based background checks, which feed into state-level reviews, have been backlogged nationwide since COVID slowed processing centers in 2020. The system has recovered, but it hasn’t caught up. Every week a candidate waits is a week they might find something else to do.
Police Departments Are Outbidding Private Security
Here’s the factor that nobody in the private security industry wants to talk about openly: law enforcement agencies are hiring aggressively, and they’re pulling from the same candidate pool.
Memphis Police Department has been running recruitment drives throughout 2022. Chief CJ Davis has made staffing a priority, and MPD’s starting salary for a sworn officer sits around $41,000 to $46,000 per year depending on education, with benefits, a pension, and a clear career track. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, Bartlett PD, Germantown PD, and Collierville PD are all hiring too.
Compare that to what armed guards earn. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the median hourly wage for security guards in the Memphis metropolitan area was $14.57 in 2021, the most recent data available. Armed guards earn more, typically $17 to $22 per hour in the Memphis market, but that still works out to $35,000 to $45,000 annually for a full-time position. No pension. Often limited benefits.
A 25-year-old with a clean record, a high school diploma, and the willingness to carry a firearm professionally can choose between a $19-an-hour armed guard job with a private firm or a career in law enforcement with retirement benefits. The math isn’t complicated.
Smaller police departments in the suburbs are especially effective at siphoning candidates. Bartlett and Germantown offer quality-of-life advantages that Memphis companies struggle to match: lower call volumes, newer equipment, and the perception (accurate or not) of less dangerous daily work.
What This Means for Memphis Businesses
The consequences of the shortage show up in tangible ways across the city.
Contract security companies are stretching their existing officers thin. Guards who used to work 40-hour weeks are pulling 50 and 60 hours to cover open posts. Fatigue leads to mistakes, and mistakes in armed security work carry obvious risks. An exhausted guard at a warehouse on Lamar Avenue at 3 a.m. is a liability, not an asset.
Some companies have started offering unarmed guards for posts that really need armed coverage. A property manager on Poplar Avenue told me her security provider suggested stationing an unarmed officer at her office building’s parking garage after the armed guard assigned to that post quit in September. She declined and is still looking for a replacement.
Prices are climbing. Armed guard contract rates in Memphis have risen roughly 15 to 20 percent since early 2021. Companies that locked in three-year contracts before the shortage began are protected for now. Everyone else is paying more or getting less. A security director at a Hickory Hill retail center said his monthly security spend increased by $3,400 in 2022 with no change in coverage hours.
The construction and logistics sectors are hit hardest. Distribution centers along the I-55 and I-40 corridors need armed guards for cargo theft prevention. Construction sites in the Whitehaven and Raleigh areas need armed overnight security to prevent equipment theft and copper wire stripping. These are high-demand posts in locations that most guard candidates don’t want to work.
The Wage Pressure Problem
The root cause isn’t complicated. Armed security work is dangerous, requires training and certification, and pays less than comparable jobs.
Amazon’s Memphis-area distribution centers start at $15.50 to $18 an hour for warehouse work with no firearm, no training requirement, and no risk of getting shot. FedEx, which employs tens of thousands of people in the Memphis area, offers similar starting wages for package handlers. A candidate weighing those options against $19 an hour for armed guard work, a job that requires weeks of unpaid training time and carries personal physical risk, often chooses the warehouse.
Security companies know they need to raise wages. The problem is passing those costs through to clients who are already complaining about rate increases. A mid-size contract security firm operating in Shelby County told me their profit margins on armed guard contracts have shrunk from 12 percent to about 6 percent over the past two years. They can’t absorb another round of wage increases without raising rates again, and some clients will walk.
Technology as a Partial Solution
Some Memphis businesses are turning to technology to fill gaps that guards can’t cover. Camera systems with remote monitoring, license plate readers at parking lot entrances, and access control systems that reduce the need for a physical guard presence have all seen increased adoption in 2022.
A property management company operating several retail centers in East Memphis told me they installed AI-powered camera analytics at two locations this year. The system flags unusual activity, like someone lingering in a parking lot after hours or a vehicle circling the property repeatedly, and alerts a remote monitoring center. It cost less than six months of armed guard coverage at one site.
That said, technology doesn’t replace a human being who can make decisions, interact with tenants, and physically respond to an incident. The warehouse on Holmes Road that can’t fill its armed guard position isn’t going to solve a potential armed robbery with a camera system.
Where This Goes Next
The armed guard shortage in Tennessee won’t resolve quickly. Training requirements are increasing, not decreasing. Law enforcement agencies will keep hiring. Wages in competing industries continue to rise. The candidate pool for armed security work, people who are old enough (21 for armed positions in Tennessee), have clean records, can pass a firearms qualification, and are willing to work nights and weekends for $19 an hour, is finite and shrinking.
TDCI’s new training requirements starting January 1 are necessary. The state needs better-trained guards, and Dallas’s Law addresses real gaps in the current system. The tradeoff is that higher standards, applied to a profession that already can’t attract enough candidates, will make the shortage worse before it gets better.
Memphis businesses that rely on armed security need to plan for a market where qualified guards are scarce and getting scarcer. That means longer lead times when staffing contracts, higher budgets for security line items, and realistic conversations with security providers about what coverage actually looks like when every firm in town is short-staffed.
The Holmes Road warehouse is still looking for its armed guard. At $19 an hour, it might be looking for a while.