I’m on DHS also but not getting any work on that end. I hate that stuff anyway but it’s better than nothing.
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Still no work here. Anyone heard anything. I’ve heard some full-timers are being placed on unemployment for the time being. Is the industry tapped out and done?
Depending how long this shutdown lasts, I imagine things will only get worse before it gets better workload wise.
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Hard times are ahead for 1099s and contactors as a group esp if the shutdown persists for a long time.
Someone (a higher up for 1099’s) said on a phone call on Tuesday, they thought we might see work released even with the shutdown. Well… here we are. Already looking for something else to get out of the field (no pun intended) for good.
Doubtful when the investigators directly employed by the primes do not have enough work.
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I am starting to feel a slight onset of panic. Third week of getting crumbs for work for a source or two needing in person with significant drive time. How is everyone else in the 1099er world?
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Terrible here. Zero work assigned for almost 2 weeks. No TDY work. And our “higher ups” are being radio silent about what to expect. How are we supposed to live like this? It’s not like they pay us enough to have huge stacks of cash saved up.
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No work for at least 4 weeks.
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Nothing at all besides an in person source or record attempt thrown at me for 2+ hours of drive time here and there. Does anyone know if this is due to the end of the fiscal year / budget renewals like every company POC is telling us or is this the new norm? Supposedly this happens every year around this time but I’ve never seen it this dry for the work available and I’ve been in the field for 15 years .. 
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I think its a combination of everything. It’s a difficult situation for everyone without a second income. The vendor I work for is in meetings this week. I hope they still have a company at the end of the week. It’s never been like this since 2001 that I know of and I’ve been working non-stop since then. Of course someone will come on and post saying blah blah blah and disagree with me, but I can assure you it’s never been like this.
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I believe it’s the new norm. Continuous vetting, VTC, and reduced coverage requirements under Trusted Workforce 2.0 have permanently reduced the workload and it’s never coming back.
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I remember way back when USIS had a RIF and 10% of investigators nationwide were let go. My guess, from a business standpoint, is that Peraton and CACI will be letting go of a lot of workers in the near future. They can’t pay full timers to just sit around and do nothing. So in a strange way it may be beneficial to be a contractor in our field.
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Oh they’re definitely not paying. We’ve already been encouraged to file for unemployment. I think they will force people to quit before they do layoffs.
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Might be time to dust off the resume or stock up on cat food and Tuna Helper. Difficult to see how the workload will increase enough to support the current workforce now that the backlog is gone.
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The supposed meeting between my 1099 and the primary resulted in no news to the field. Unfortunately no news in this business is always bad news. If it’s good news they leak out at least a hint before a formal announcement in order to keep people from moving on and leaving.
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I’m on day 20 with not one case or one item assigned to me. It’s beginning to tick me off because one of the main things that solidified my decision to go 1099 was when I was told 30% of all work had to be assigned to the subcontractors. My boss called me and seems optimistic but the question becomes WHEN! I’m wondering if we have a right to ask for some advance pay or something to keep us afloat.
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You have a right to ask for whatever you want, but as a third-party vendor/self-employed businessman they’ll tell you to pound sand. To quote the great Hyman Roth, “this is the business we have chosen.”
There’s just enough in-person attempts coming my way after remote efforts failed to keep me grossing about $500 a week. I’ll tell you this: I’m unimpressed by the quality of the work I see by full-timers working remote and making the most pro forma attempts to reach people by phone and then giving up, or scheduling in person attempts (for an employment record for example) to an invalid location that would have been revealed as such by two minutes of googling.
The best-case scenario for me as a 1099 investigator is that this goes until the prime I “engage” with fires a bunch of salaried full-time investigators. Then the shutdown ends the next day, triggering an outflow of pent-up work but with a smaller team of investigators so there’s more work to go around.
I don’t know how realistic that is. My work had already noticeably slowed down prior to the shutdown. The permanent shift to VTC ESIs changed up my business model, and in a bad way. I’m in a Sun Belt city that has a big mil contractor/R&D presence. These guys will always be hiring and onboarding top secret engineers as long as we’re flying [fighter jet] and firing [missile system]. Not really vulnerable to shutdowns or politics short of a massive DoD budget cut.
I was a regular visitor - once or twice a week - at these facilities because there was always tons of people to be interviewed. And it was easy work - most people are straight edge or they wouldn’t have been hired, and most bosses/coworkers are easy to reach and interview because they know the importance of the process. They want Bob cleared quickly so he can get to work on the program. But with the shift to VTC I’ve lost that guaranteed book of business. [Company] is still hiring tons of people but some investigator living on a goat farm in Montana is sitting in his basement cranking out five of those a day. Meanwhile I’m driving to the Amazon warehouse across town to see if anyone remembers Jose who was an order picker there for six months in 2023.
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Pretty much every in-person extension I get due to “failed remote attempts” is something I can immediately obtain via remote attempts.
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I am hoping too that full-time investigators will be let go. It may seem mean but since they have apparently over hired and there simply is not enough work to go around they can’t justify paying full-timers to sit home and do nothing. The full-time job is always based on stats and that will never change.
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