Average earnings grow by fastest rate ever

摘要

Architects have seen average earnings rise by the largest figure ever recorded - up by 15 on the year to April. That's the stand-out finding from this year's RIBA/The Fees Bureau Earnings Survey. That rate of increase is more than twice as fast as any increase figure since this survey began in the 1980s. That's a staggering achievement. After six years of poor performance, whether brought on by pandemic recovery or supply-side issues, architects' earnings have now returned to their long-term trajectory. For at least 15 years, between 1995 and 2010, we saw average earnings rising consistently year on year. The financial crisis brought the first set of doldrums, and ever since then that long-established pattern was replaced by one in which average earnings were nearly always outperformed by inflation. This year sees earnings fully make up for recent years'under-performance. Finally, growth in architects' average earnings between 1995 and 2023 exactly matches inflation over the same period. However, to a certain extent it's disappointing to see that average earnings have only matched, and not exceeded, inflation over those 30 years.