What key factors determine an architect’s salary? In short, on an average architect’s salary, you’ll be paying back your student debt for many years into the future.
The situation is not helped by the fact that architects are required to complete three years of internships, which tend to be unpaid or badly-paid, before full qualification. This compares to $29,400 for other subjects.
A survey by the American Institute of Architecture Students found that their average debt after graduation was well in excess of $40,000 (taking into account course fees, exam fees, and other expenses such as books, software licenses and materials). The cost of becoming an architectĪrchitecture has one of the longest training periods of any profession, which can prove expensive. How much you get paid will be influenced by a lot of different factors such as your qualifications, experience, location and employer – read on to find out more on this. The Bureau of Labor Statistics plumps for $81,250, and, state that $80,568 is the national average. The site suggests that the lowest-paid 25% of architects are taking home around $61,280 (roughly the same as the average salary suggested by ), while the best-paid 25% make $104,510. ups the ante again, reporting an average of $79,380. On the figures are slightly more promising, with an average salary of $76,100 and a range of $46,080 to $125,520. The website offers the lowest estimate, suggesting American architects earn $61,177 on average, with the lowest salaries around $43k and the highest around $102k. However, you could find yourself earning considerably more or less. Let’s kick off with the million-dollar question – although, sadly, that isn’t the answer! How much are you actually going to make as an architect? If you calculate the mean from various sources, the average salary in the US is somewhere around $76k. How much does an architect make in the United States? We’ll show you the cities, states and firms where architects’ paychecks are the highest (and lowest), keeping in mind that other benefits such as healthcare insurance and flexible hours can be worth their weight in gold.Īnd finally, we’ll address some pay-related gripes in our FAQ section.
In this article, we’ll give you an overview of the salaries you can expect to earn over a lifelong career, and suggest some concrete steps you can take to push your salary into the upper percentile. Architecture can be a hugely fulfilling profession, but only rarely is it a lucrative one. Where do these fictional architects get their cash?Ĭertainly not from their day jobs, which in the US attract salaries roughly equal to those of speech therapists, real estate brokers and high school language teachers.
From Jungle Fever to Inception, architecture has been presented in movies as a glamorous profession populated by workers who – when not pulling all-nighters in their glamorous offices with floor-to-ceiling windows – eat in glamorous restaurants wearing glamorous outfits, before going home to their starkly glamorous apartments.