The big business of personal protection: How private security became a $50 billion industry — SkimNews
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- Allied Universal anchors the boom with roughly $23 billion in annual revenue, operations in 100+ countries, and about 800,000 employees — making it the seventh-largest private employer in the world and serving more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies, with CEO Steve Jones publicly eyeing an IPO.
- The private security sector grew 17% over the past decade to surpass $50 billion in 2025, with US outsourced services accounting for just over $35 billion, according to industry broker Robert H. Perry & Associates.
- S&P 500 firms providing security to at least some executives rose from about 19% in 2019 to 40% in 2025, with median spending ballooning 178% over that period — drawing in first-time buyers like Walmart and prompting Cracker Barrel to continue covering protective costs for former CEO Julie Masino.
- Security guards in the US now number nearly 1.3 million — almost double the police and sheriff's patrol workforce — yet earn a mean wage of $20.42/hour ($42,470/year), far below the $38.08 police average, with more than 40% lacking employer-provided health insurance and 89% annual industry turnover.
- Despite violent crime plunging 71% from 1994 to 2024 and dropping an estimated 9% in 2025 alone, nearly half of Americans told Gallup in October they believe crime is increasing — a gap industry leaders explicitly cite as fueling demand.
- High-profile attacks are accelerating the trend: the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan, a Molotov cocktail thrown at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco home in April, and more than 300 mass shootings recorded this year by the Gun Violence Archive.
Why it matters: The 178% surge in median S&P 500 executive security spending since 2019 — alongside a guard workforce that doubled police while earning roughly half the wage — shows companies are funneling massive sums into private protection while the 1.3 million workers absorbing that demand remain underpaid, undertrained, and largely uninsured.
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