Architect salary
What an architect actually earns, from 646 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-09-06.
Switch the market above to see architect pay in the 3 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Architecture is the profession this instrument was built around, and its pay is the reason. The blended US median is about 86,000 dollars with an OEWS median of 96,690, modest for a career that demands a five-year degree, a multi-year internship, and a licensing exam. Call it the prestige tax: the work is admired and the credential is steep, and the pay does not match either. Unemployment is low at 2.2 percent and the trend since 2019 is a healthy 20 percent, so the field is stable and improving, but the ceiling stays lower than the training implies. That gap is the whole thesis behind PivotHop. An architect’s skills, spatial reasoning, project coordination, visualization, and the discipline of shipping a complex thing with a team, transfer to adjacent fields that pay more, from interior design to industrial design to product and UX (user-experience design). The routes below price each of those moves from an architect’s actual skill profile.
Open architect roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
- Architect/Architectural Designer at Boulder ChamberBoulder, COTodayApply
Architect III at Goodwyn Mills CawoodAtlanta, GA1d agoApply- Architectural Designer at TechnipowerMidland, VA1d agoApply
Architectural Designer at Stella Contracting IncLos Angeles, CA1d agoApply
Residential Architectural Designer at ArchinectStockbridge, MA1d agoApply
Architekt 80 - 100% (m/w) in Escholzmatt LU at ManpowerEscholzmatt, Luzern, Switzerland1d agoApply
By seniority
Posted-median pay by seniority signal in the title, from our corpus. Noisy at the edges where sample sizes are small.
By country
- United States$79,617$99,684$127,086
- United Kingdom$57,985$62,761$72,844
- Australia$71,675$82,426$89,594
Switzerland · official wage bands
median CHF 8'730/month
Swiss postings do not state pay, so these are not posted salaries: they are the federal wage survey (Lohnstrukturerhebung 2024) for the ISCO group 21 Naturwissenschaftler, Mathematiker und Ingenieure: standardized gross monthly, full-time, 13th salary included pro rata. The band covers the whole occupation group, which is coarser than this occupation alone.
Annual ≈ CHF 104'760 at the median. Source: Bundesamt für Statistik, LSE 2024.
Top-paying US states
OEWS median by state, highest first.
- Wyoming$107,040
- California$105,840
- Connecticut$105,200
- Massachusetts$101,980
- Hawaii$100,370
- Maryland$99,210
Roles that pay more, that these skills already reach
Median pay from each destination’s own postings, with the readiness an architect profile already covers.
- 393 open structural engineer roles$105,915 median · +$6,231 · 40% readiness
- 600 open construction manager roles$100,796 median · +$1,112 · 31% readiness
- 14 open industrial designer roles$100,224 median · +$540 · 26% readiness
Every measured move out of this role, ranked by readiness: alternative careers for an architect.
Is your offer fair?
Run a specific number through FairElephant, which weighs it against this data, your location, and remote market rates.
Move into or out of architect
- architect → interior designermeasured route
- architect → industrial designermeasured route
- architect → mep engineermeasured route
Related salaries
- Civil Engineer salary$95,550 median
- Mechanical Engineer salary$112,630 median
- UX Designer salary$115,577 median
Quick answers
How much do architects make?
The official BLS OEWS median is 96,690 dollars, with a blended posted median near 86,000, modest for a career requiring a five-year degree and licensure. The typical range is 75,000 to 107,000.
Why do architects earn less than expected?
The credential is steep, a five-year degree plus internship and exams, but pay has not kept pace, a gap sometimes called the prestige tax. Unemployment is a stable 2.2 percent.
What careers pay more than architecture for the same skills?
Several adjacent fields, from interior and industrial design to product and UX, reward an architect’s spatial reasoning and coordination at a higher band. The routes below measure each move.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 17-1011. Unemployment is the 2025 BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) CPS (Current Population Survey) annual-average rate for “Architects, except landscape and naval.” Live corpus 646 observations, 2026-09-06. Definitions in the glossary.