Our Workforce
Who We Are
Today, approximately 50,000 Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) serve on TSA's frontline at more than 450 airports nationwide. They use their training and experience to effectively and efficiently screen nearly 2 million passengers a day.
Good security requires an engaged and empowered workforce, and TSA has undertaken a series of progressive workforce initiatives in recent years. These efforts have focused on motivating and educating the workforce by opening lines of communication, fostering safe and productive work environments and identifying and rewarding exemplary performance. Initiatives include:
- The Career Evolution Program, in which entry level positions with promotion potential at TSA headquarters were opened to field employees willing to relocate.
- The nurse-case management program, implemented to provide focus and direction for early medical intervention for injured employees, reduces lost time due to injury. The program has already decreased the initial work-related absences from an average of 45 days to an average of 12 days.
- Enhanced whistleblower protection rights for TSOs enable them to appeal whistleblower retaliation complaints to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent board. Additionally, a Peer Review Program was implemented for frontline officers, which allows them to have workplace issues subject to grievance decided by a panel of their peers.
- TSA provides government payment of Federal Employee Health Benefits at the full-time rate for part-time TSOs. It also expanded the Voluntary Leave Transfer Program to permit employees to donate sick and compensatory leave as well as annual leave to other TSA employees in need.
Additional facts and figures about the TSA workforce:
- More than 50 percent of TSOs have been with TSA for more than 5 years.
- Nearly 25 percent of TSA’s workforce are veterans of the U.S. military.
- Voluntary attrition of full-time TSOs was 3.7 percent (as of 6/4/11), a drop of 71 percent from FY06.
- Depending on the position, TSOs participate in an initial 180 hours of classroom and on-the-job training.
- On a daily basis, more than 3,800 IED drills are conducted at checkpoints nationwide. In addition, approximately 45,000 images of dangerous and prohibited items are projected onto X-ray screens during daily checkpoint operations to test the skills of our officers.
