Do architects make good money compared with other workers?
By the numbers the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes, yes. Architects had a median annual wage of $99,280 in May 2025, or $47.73 an hour. The median for all U.S. occupations was $50,980, so the typical architect out-earns the typical worker by a factor of about 1.9. Search results for this question include a Reddit post titled "Are Architects underpaid?" The BLS figures below cover the pay side of that question.
Check the label before quoting the number. BLS files this job as architects, except landscape and naval, and lists landscape architects separately. Its charts also show a wider group, architects, surveyors, and cartographers, at $87,950. The $99,280 median belongs to architects proper.
The bottom and top of the architect pay range
Do architects make good money at the low end too? A median hides the spread, so BLS also reports the ends. The lowest-paid 10% of architects earned less than $62,300 in May 2025, and the highest-paid 10% earned more than $161,420. That is a gap of $99,120 between the two ends, and the top figure is about 2.6 times the bottom one.
Even the floor beats the national median. The 10th-percentile architect wage sits $11,320 above the $50,980 median for all occupations. BLS does not break architect pay down by years of experience or license status, so the percentile range is the official picture of how pay is spread across all architects.
Which employers pay architects the most
BLS lists median pay for three of the biggest industries. Government, excluding state and local education and hospitals, paid $115,920. Architectural, engineering, and related services paid $98,440, and construction paid $95,760. The government premium over the services firms is $17,480, or about 18%.
Employment tells you how little of the field that premium touches. About 74% of architects work in architectural, engineering, and related services, 14% are self-employed, 4% work in construction, and 3% work in government (excluding state and local education and hospitals). BLS gives no separate wage for the self-employed, so the industry list cannot say what running a small practice pays.
Do architects make good money next to jobs with different training paths?
Some jobs with shorter training pay about the same. Nuclear medicine technologists, who typically need an associate's degree, had a median of $101,370 in May 2025, which is $2,090 above the architect figure (see nuclear medicine technologist salary). MRI technologists, also typically an associate's degree, earned $95,480, or $3,800 below (see MRI tech salary).
Two master's-level jobs land almost on top of it. Genetic counselors earned a $100,040 median, only $760 more than architects (genetic counselor salary). Speech-language pathologists earned $97,870, and their 10th percentile of $62,900 is within $600 of the architect floor (speech-language pathologist salary).
For architects, BLS describes a longer path. They typically need a bachelor's degree, most often a 5-year Bachelor of Architecture, and that every state board requires a paid internship, generally about 3 years, before candidates sit the licensing exam. All states and the District of Columbia require a license. A master's degree adds 1 to 5 years, depending on prior training.
Job outlook: 4% growth and about 6,900 openings a year
About 124,600 people worked as architects in 2025. BLS projects 4% growth from 2025 to 2035, adding roughly 5,300 jobs, which it rates as about as fast as the average for all occupations (3%). It expects about 6,900 openings a year, or roughly 5.5% of current jobs, and says many come from people who transfer to other occupations or leave the labor force, such as to retire.
On automation, BLS says design work is becoming more efficient with improved building information modeling software, measuring technology, and the integration of artificial intelligence, and that the same productivity gains let architects take on more of the building process and new responsibilities. The 4% figure is a projected increase, not a decline.