Two numbers explain a lot about the position defense contractors find themselves in right now. The construction and skilled trades sector was short 439,000 workers in 2025. A new security clearance took an average of 243 days to process that same year. Together they describe a labor market where finding qualified people is hard and getting them cleared to work takes even longer. Margarita Howard built HX5 around an approach that addresses both problems at once.

Founded in 2004, HX5 now employs roughly 1,000 people across more than 20 states, supporting Department of Defense and NASA programs at about 70 government locations. The work demands security clearances and years of program specific knowledge, exactly the kind of experience that is scarce and slow to replace when it walks out the door.

Government Departures Add Pressure

The federal government contributed to its own version of that pressure last year. Across all agencies, 348,219 employees departed in 2025 against just 116,912 new hires, and 61,600 civilian Department of Defense employees left through a deferred resignation program. A federal employee averages 11.8 years of agency experience, and losses concentrated among senior engineers and program managers carry institutional knowledge that takes far longer than a hiring cycle to rebuild.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Dale Marks told a Senate subcommittee the department is preparing investments to rebuild its skilled trades workforce through partnerships with universities and trade schools, but those efforts compete for the same limited pool the private sector is already drawing from.

Built Around the Bottleneck

Margarita Howard’s answer has been a sourcing strategy centered on veterans transitioning out of the military, many already cleared, through the company’s participation in SkillBridge. More than 30 percent of HX5’s workforce are veterans, an approach the Department of Labor recognized with a 2025 HIRE Vets Gold Medallion Award. It sidesteps both bottlenecks at once, drawing from a talent pool that is already trained and, in many cases, already cleared, at a moment when the rest of the market is competing for the same scarce workers.