Occupation / job
Architects, Except Landscape and Naval
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
How many people are qualified for this, and how many are doing it
The pay figure above only describes people who got the job. This is the part it leaves out.
There are 123,398 licensed architects in the United States (2025). Federal employment records account for 106,770 people working in Architects, Except Landscape and Naval — 86.5%.
The remainder is a ceiling, not an unemployment rate. Holding the credential is not the same as wanting a job with it, and the remainder also holds everyone who moved into management or teaching, retired without giving the credential up, or works self-employed in a way the employment survey misses. What the pair does establish is that the pay figure above is a survivor's figure, and roughly how many people it is silent about. Everything else that gap contains
Denominator: licensed architects in the United States = 123,398 (Standing count of people holding the credential, as at the end of 2025) · NCARB by the Numbers 2026, State of Licensure · view
Who this suits
$99,280 is $4,105 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Architects, Except Landscape and Naval are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
National employment is 106,770. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
Architecture, surveying and cartography suit people who think in space and can hold a design against a code, a boundary or a survey that does not negotiate.
How long it takes to become one of the 106,770 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
From $77,960 to $126,550 is $4,049 a month, or 1.6x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $77,960 — $37.48 an hour, $27,940 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Architects, Except Landscape and Naval is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if you dislike being constrained by code, boundary and client budget — those three decide most of what gets built.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 106,770 figure counts people already working as Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $99,280 as where you might be after years in Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, and $77,960 as where you would start.
The middle half of this field earns between $77,960 and $126,550. That is $48,590 of range, with $99,280 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $77,960 and $126,550 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $99,280. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $27,270; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $48,590.
The climb from $99,280 to $126,550 is $27,270; the drop to $77,960 is $21,320. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Architects, Except Landscape and Naval and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $47.73 at the midpoint for Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, $37.48 at the 25th percentile and $60.84 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Architects, Except Landscape and Naval for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $99,280 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, the hourly figure is $99,280 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else