Who’s watching the watchers on the 30%?
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Any 1099 workload reports from the field? My report: this sucks!
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No new work now for almost a month. What’s worse is when you ask for any updates you get crickets. I don’t think they’re fighting for us to get any work, even though we’re supposed to get 30 percent of whatever is out there.
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Full time employees aren’t getting much work as well. I think we will seesome RIFs soon.
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Based on my experience of having worked for USIS and CACI for 18 years, and the way things were done in the past, at least 10 percent of the full-timers are going to be let go. And it’s not just because of the shutdown but also because of no backlog and different methods of working cases such as VTC, no more residences to cover, etc.
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If we ever get work I’ll remember the crickets and act accordingly with return crickets to all future “favors" and urgent requests, which in the past I would have felt bad declining. They could at least lie to us like they do to full timers. Apparently 1099 doesn’t even merit normal industry lies (still learning 1099) haha.
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Who isn’t fighting in some way or another in this industry for consistency (contract survival)? Too many factors now impact this line of work and growth. I know the primes and subs are doing the best they can but until purse gets opened up for DHS and military hires there won’t be any promises for anything else as residual.
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“Thank you for your flexibility and professionalism as we work through this together.”
Uh. How is it we’re doing that, exactly?
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Gaslighting so you won’t leave and find a job that doesn’t use and abuse you.
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What are y’all hangers-on doing out there for work?
DoorDash where I am is a joke. I’ve picked up some hours with a friend I do home health stuff for. I had an interview with a local non-profit, and will probably jump ship if they offer it to me.
The deafening silence from “leadership” is very telling.
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I’ve been enjoying the time off. I have put a big dent in my “to do” list, started volunteering at a school and been more consistent about working out. I am guessing things will remain slow through the holidays. If work availability doesn’t improve by the end of Feb I will look for something new.
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Lucky you. Hard to enjoy the time off when you have to pull money from life savings to cover monthly obligations.
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I feel bad for any 1099 who is relying on this for more than discretionary income. I wish I could say that I am hopeful that the workload levels will increase soon. But I’m not.
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Some of us are career BI’s dating back to OPM and have once been hourly investigators but decided to go independent contractor so we could maintain our sanity and mental health. If you work enough contracts beyond DCSA, you used to find enough work to survive in this industry and some months even thrive. 2025 has been the most difficult year to make it as an IC. Unless you have a federal retirement or pension or a spouse working full time, you are unable to make ends meet. I thought I may be able to wait this out until a new presidential administration comes into power but sadly even those of us working many contracts for many different vendors cannot remain busy or create a livelihood. I sadly concede it’s no longer viable and not enough volume of work to do this full time and create enough income as an IC and make ends meet in a super inflated economy.
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I would think that the footprint of FT and 1099 BI’s will eventually shrink to a level that makes it sustainable for the new/reduced work load. But how long will that take? A year or two?
Possibly longer. Maybe four years.
Sustainability here is dependant on backlog and new hires and neither is a feature any fed agency or contracting company can offer especially since remote tools were out in place 5 yrs ago that became our industry AI.
How is AI going to be used in background investigations going forward? Any insights?
Get the chip and never have another background? Coming soon to a theater near you.
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Example of current gaslighting. “Now that the shutdown is over you will start seeing work slowly filter in but it will take time.”
Question: How about the fact there was no substantial work which slowed to a snails pace PRIOR to the shutdown? Is the previous issue of barely any work that was prior to the shutdown also now magically resolved with the government being open? Thank you for the gaslighting, at least you put one ounce of effort into the magic show.
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