More than 1.4 million contractors and consultants have security clearances, according to a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010 requires the ODNI to report to Congress the number of Americans who hold security clearances.
As of October 2010, nearly 4.2 million Americans hold security clearances, an increase of 45,000 from the previous year. Federal employees holding clearances number 2.8 million.
Contractors holding clearances totaled 541,097, down nearly 11,000 from the year before.
In May 2009, the Government Accountability Office said nearly 2.4 million Americans held clearances. That number did not include those who handled matters relating to national intelligence.
The ODNI said in its report the time required to process a clearance has shrunk in the past two years. In 2010, a clearance took an average of nearly 53 days to process. In 2006, the average processing time for initial clearances was 165 days.
