Despite a recession in nonresidential construction through much of the period between 2002 and 2005, salaries for architecture positions at U.S. architecture firms increased more than 10 percent (about a 3.3 percent annual compound growth rate), AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA, reports in his overview to the 2005 AIA Compensation Survey. The survey, which covers the last three years in detail, shows that this growth rate was below the rate the profession experienced between 1999 and 2002 (5.1 percent per year) and 1996 to 1999 (5.3 percent). Still, it represents a significant increase in compensation, particularly given that professional salaries in general grew only 2.5 percent per year on average over the same time frame.

Since the recession of the early 1990s, when compensation for architecture positions failed to keep pace even with overall inflation, architects and interns working at architecture firms have experienced a notable improvement in compensation, Baker notes. Between 1996 and 2005, architecture positions have seen compensation increases totaling almost 50 percent, while compensation for professional, specialty, and technical positions at U.S. companies increased by less than 32 percent.

The 2005 AIA Compensation Survey allows firms to benchmark their own compensation performance and compare it to other architecture firms regionally and nationally. Questions answered by the survey include:

• What percentage of compensation is made up by incentive payments, such as nonguaranteed overtime?
• Have nonarchitecture staff compensation gains at architecture firms outpaced gains for architecture staff?
• Has the compensation gap between large firms shrunk or widened?
• What is the salary differential between junior and senior positions in firms?
• How much of base salary do employee benefits constitute these days?

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