About 1,200 people in Butler and Mercer counties are out of jobs as of Tuesday.

U.S. Investigative Services, which has offices in Boyers and Grove City, announced that the termination of two federal government contracts on Tuesday meant that 2,500 of its employees around the United States would be without work.

The three offices in Boyers and in Grove City had employed 1,500 people. The company, based in Falls Church, Va., had 6,000 total employees.

In September, the federal Office of Personnel Management announced that it would not renew its contracts with the company, which were to do background checks for prospective federal employees.

In a statement, USIS officials said they were disappointed. But the company noted that other contractors will pick up the work that USIS lost, and USIS expects that most, if not all, of USIS employees who were laid off will get job offers from those companies.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, of Butler said such a large job loss always is a concern.

He and his staff began talking to USIS, OPM and the Department of Homeland Security as soon as they heard the contracts would not be renewed. He said he wanted to see what his office could do to help resolve the situation.

Kelly noted that there are other companies such as KeyPoint Government Solutions, which has offices in Slippery Rock and Grove City, and CACI, which has some local offices, that also do background checks.

“The volume of work is still there,” Kelly said.

He said he got a good feeling from talking to people that these companies may get the contracts and they may be able to absorb the people who lost USIS jobs. KeyPoint and CACI also have other contracts to do background investigations for OPM.

KeyPoint, based in Loveland, Colo., has 2,000 employees and offers background checks, security consulting and investigative services. CACI, based in Arlington, Va., has more than 15,000 employees worldwide and offers military support services, IT solutions and investigative services.

Butler County Commissioner Bill McCarrier said that despite the job losses, he is optimistic the jobs will remain here.

He said he was at the Boyers USIS office at Iron Mountain on Branchton Road a few weeks ago. The people he talked to there said the company that may get the contracts that USIS lost also is at Iron Mountain and it was hoped that those laid off employees would be able to work there.

“That would be my hope also,” McCarrier said.

Although nothing is guaranteed, McCarrier said the best people to take on new work for that company would be ones who already have done the work.

The job loses and the loss of contracts come after a difficult year for USIS.

In August, USIS discovered an external cyber attack on its corporate network and reported it to federal authorities.

USIS said there was no wrongdoing by the company in the cyber attack, and that it should not preclude it from bidding for government contracts.

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging that the company at its Grove City and Boyers offices did at least 665,000 incomplete background checks for OPM between 2008 and 2012.

USIS said no current employee had any connection to that complaint and that a new executive team was installed since the company learned of the allegations.

The company was involved in the background checks for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and for Aaron Alexis, a defense contractor who killed 12 people last year at the Washington Navy Yard.

USIS said those background checks were not botched and they were not an issue in the federal complaint.