A security company owner in Bartlett told me something last Tuesday that I haven’t been able to shake. “I’ve got contracts for 140 posts,” he said. “I can fill 112 of them on any given night. The other 28, I’m calling retired guys, pulling supervisors off desks, or just telling the client we don’t have a body.” He’s been in the business 19 years. He said this is the worst staffing crunch he’s ever seen.
He’s not alone. Every security company owner I’ve spoken to in Memphis over the past month tells some version of the same story. They’re turning down new business because they can’t staff what they already have. They’re losing guards to Amazon, FedEx, Walmart, and each other. And the fall is about to make everything harder.
The Wage Problem Is Simple Math
Here’s the math that’s breaking the Memphis security industry. A security guard working an unarmed post in Shelby County earns between $10 and $15 per hour. The average is closer to $12 or $13. That’s the take-home, not the bill rate. For armed guards, the pay is a bit better, typically $14 to $18 per hour, depending on the company and the post.
Now look at what else is hiring in Memphis right now.
Amazon’s distribution centers across the metro area are advertising starting wages of $15 to $18 per hour for warehouse workers. No license required. No background check that takes two weeks. No requirement to stand in a parking lot at 2 a.m. in January.
FedEx, Memphis’s largest employer, is ramping up for peak season at the superhub and facilities across the logistics corridor. They’re advertising $15 to $20 per hour for package handlers, with sign-on bonuses that have ranged from $1,000 to $3,000 in recent months. The Commercial Appeal reported this week that FedEx is offering $17 to $21 per hour for some peak-season positions, up from about $15 last year.
Walmart, Target, and a half-dozen restaurant chains are all above $14 per hour for entry-level work.
A person making $12 per hour as a security guard can walk across the street and make $17 per hour at an Amazon warehouse. They don’t need a TDCI registration. They don’t need to buy black pants and steel-toe boots. They don’t need to deal with confrontational trespassers at 3 a.m. on a construction site in Raleigh.
The math doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked since the spring.
What the Summer Taught Us
This summer was supposed to be when things stabilized. Pandemic unemployment benefits ended for many workers. Schools reopened, freeing up parents who’d been staying home. The theory was that people would flood back into the labor market.
They didn’t. Or at least, they didn’t flood back into security.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee opted out of the federal $300 weekly unemployment supplement in July, ahead of the national September expiration. Security company owners I spoke with expected an immediate boost in applications. A few saw a small uptick. Most saw nothing.
The problem isn’t that people don’t want to work. The problem is that security guard work pays less than almost every alternative. A decade ago, $10 to $12 per hour for an unarmed guard was competitive with other entry-level jobs. In September 2021, it’s not even close.
Companies that raised wages to $16 to $18 per hour for unarmed guards (and $20-plus for armed) are reporting modestly better retention. One Memphis firm told me their turnover dropped from 140% annually to about 90% after a $3 per hour raise in June. Ninety percent annual turnover. That’s the “good” number.
The Holiday Hiring Tsunami
Here’s what’s coming. Every October, Amazon and FedEx launch massive holiday hiring campaigns across the Memphis metro area. FedEx alone typically hires 3,000 to 5,000 seasonal workers in the Memphis region for peak season. Amazon does similar numbers across their facilities in DeSoto County, Olive Branch, and the new operations they’ve been building along the I-269 corridor.
These aren’t vague future plans. FedEx has already started advertising peak positions. Amazon’s Memphis-area job postings have been live since early September.
The seasonal hiring wave will pull from the exact same labor pool that security companies depend on: working-age adults without college degrees who need a paycheck now. Many of them are already working as security guards. When Amazon offers $18 per hour with overtime available and a holiday bonus, a guard making $13 per hour is going to leave.
Last year’s peak season was bad for security staffing. This year will be worse because the baseline is already lower. Companies entered summer 2021 already short-staffed. They’re heading into fall even shorter.
Technology as a Partial Fix
I keep hearing the word “technology” in conversations with security executives, and I want to be honest about what it can and can’t do.
Remote video monitoring has become a legitimate supplement to physical guard presence. A monitoring center can watch multiple camera feeds and dispatch a response when something happens. For properties where the primary need is deterrence and documentation (construction sites, storage yards, parking structures), cameras with remote monitoring can replace some guard hours at a fraction of the cost.
Access control systems reduce the need for guards to sit at entry points checking badges. Modern systems with mobile credentials and visitor management software handle most of the routine access work automatically.
License plate recognition cameras at parking lots and gated communities can flag unauthorized vehicles without a guard running plates manually.
These tools work. They’re real, and they save money for the right applications. What they don’t do is replace a human being who can make judgment calls, de-escalate a confrontation, or physically intervene when someone is breaking into a car at a Midtown apartment complex. Technology handles the predictable. Guards handle the unpredictable.
The companies that are integrating technology most effectively aren’t eliminating guard positions. They’re using tech to make each guard more productive and to reduce the total number of posts they need to fill. That’s a meaningful distinction.
Small Companies Are Getting Crushed
The staffing crisis is accelerating consolidation in the Memphis security market, and that’s a trend worth watching.
Small security companies, the ones with 20 to 50 guards operating in a specific part of the city, are being squeezed from both sides. They can’t match the wages that nationals like Allied Universal and Securitas can offer (those companies have deeper pockets and can absorb short-term losses to retain staff). And they can’t fill contracts reliably enough to keep clients from leaving.
I’ve heard from two small company owners in the last month who are actively shopping their businesses to larger firms. One runs a 30-guard operation covering commercial properties in South Memphis and Whitehaven. He told me he’s lost eight guards since June, all to higher-paying jobs in logistics. He can’t raise wages because his contracts don’t allow mid-term rate increases. His choices are to sell, default on contracts, or operate at a loss until renewal season.
TDCI registration data supports this anecdote. New applications for individual guard registrations in Tennessee have declined compared to the same period in 2020. Fewer people are entering the industry. Meanwhile, demand for security services has never been higher, driven by the same crime trends we’ve covered in recent weeks.
The consolidation pressure will reshape the Memphis market over the next year or two. Fewer companies, larger companies, higher prices. That’s the trajectory.
The Poaching Problem
When you can’t recruit new guards, you recruit somebody else’s guards. This is happening constantly in Memphis right now, and it’s creating a level of hostility between security companies that I haven’t seen before.
The playbook is simple. A company finds out who’s guarding a competitor’s post. They approach that guard and offer a dollar or two more per hour. The guard switches. The losing company scrambles to fill the gap, often by doing the same thing to someone else’s guard.
Nobody wins this game except the guards themselves (and honestly, a $2 raise from $12 to $14 doesn’t exactly change anyone’s life). The total supply of guards stays the same. Companies just shuffle the same people around while spending money on hiring bonuses and onboarding costs.
One company owner on Summer Avenue described it to me as “rearranging deck chairs.” He’s not wrong.
The DeSoto County Factor
The Memphis security labor market doesn’t stop at the state line. DeSoto County, Mississippi, with its concentration of distribution centers in Olive Branch, Southaven, and Hernando, draws from the same workforce.
Amazon’s Olive Branch facility, the warehouses along Nail Road, and the steady growth of logistics operations in DeSoto County have created thousands of jobs that compete directly with Memphis security positions. A guard living in Southaven who works a post in Hickory Hill can switch to a warehouse job five minutes from home and make more money with shorter commutes.
Interstate competition for labor isn’t new. What’s new is the wage gap. When warehouse jobs were paying $11 to $13 per hour, they were roughly equivalent to security work. At $16 to $20 per hour, they’re pulling people out of the industry entirely.
What the Next Six Months Look Like
I don’t want to sugarcoat this. The next six months will be the hardest staffing period the Memphis security industry has faced in at least two decades.
October through December will see the peak season drain. January and February will bring weather-related absences and the post-holiday hangover, when seasonal workers decide whether to go back to security or stay in logistics. March might bring some relief if the economy softens, and that’s a thin reed to build a staffing plan on.
Companies that haven’t raised wages yet will be forced to. The market is setting the price, and $12 per hour isn’t it anymore. Contracts signed in 2019 and 2020 at pre-shortage rates will need to be renegotiated or they’ll be understaffed by default.
Clients should expect some degradation in service quality at companies that are running at 70% to 80% staffing capacity. Missed shifts, unfamiliar guards rotating through your property, and less experienced personnel at posts that used to have seasoned veterans. This isn’t a reflection of bad management. It’s what happens when an industry can’t compete on wages and the labor market doesn’t care about your contract obligations.
The guard who was at your front desk last month? He’s sorting packages in Olive Branch now. He got a $5 per hour raise and he didn’t have to work Christmas.
Can you blame him?