EXPOSED
The production layer of architecture — massing studies, rendering, sheet sets, zoning and code checks, specification writing, permit paperwork — is exactly where generative tools and parametric BIM automation are landing hardest, and that layer is where most billable hours of a median architect actually sit. What holds is the licensed stamp on construction documents, the personal liability for life-safety decisions, construction administration on active job sites, and the client and consultant negotiation that resolves conflicting budget, code, and program demands. Expect the same split seen in software: fewer people producing drawings, the same or fewer people signing them and owning the outcome.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $80,750 → $99,280 -1.6% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+3.9%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 106,770 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +3.9% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 61/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~7,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
PlannerArchitectLocation ManHome DesignerSpace PlannerHouse DesignerLocation WorkerDesign ArchitectLocation AnalystFacility DesignerPlumbing DesignerProject ArchitectBuilding ArchitectFacilities PlannerInterior ArchitectLicensed ArchitectBuilding ConsultantStructural DesignerHealthcare ArchitectResidential DesignerSpecification WriterStructural ArchitectGreen Building ArchitectReal Estate Site Analyst
Holding it up: liability shield . Weakest point: embodiment .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Schematic massing, IBC egress and occupancy checks, sheet-set coordination in Revit, and outline specs are all being absorbed by generative and parametric tooling, but detailing an unbuilt wall assembly, RFI resolution during construction, and reconciling a client's program against a site's setbacks still require someone in the loop — a mixed 11, not a 6, because the non-automatable share is real work, not just sign-off.
Some physical or field component Site visits, punch lists, and observing whether the flashing was actually installed as detailed put you in unfinished buildings with hard hats several times a month, but the other four days a week are Revit, Bluebeam, and consultant calls — a 9, not a 15, because the field time is inspection rather than execution.
Licensed human required and personally liable The registered architect's seal on construction documents is required by state practice acts before a permit issues, and that seal carries personal liability for egress, fire separations, and structural coordination through the statute of repose — an unlicensed person genuinely cannot substitute, which is why this sits at 15 rather than mid-range.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls You decide the exit stair count, the fire rating strategy, and which of three code-compliant options the owner can actually afford, then defend those calls to a plans examiner and potentially a jury after a fire — high-stakes and ambiguous, but bounded by IBC, ADA, and consultant sign-offs rather than made from nothing, hence 14.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (11/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (15/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (12/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (14/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 41 of this occupation's 61 points (67%).
Embodiment (9/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to architects, except landscape and naval on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 73/100 — SAFE.
Building codes and AHJ practice increasingly requiring performance-based alternate-means-and-methods submissions (already common in IBC Ch.1 alternate compliance and in mass-timber/tall-wood approvals), where a named architect argues life-safety equivalence before a board rather than checking prescriptive tables. Also expanded jurisdictional design-review and resilience/embodied-carbon boards putting contested discretionary calls on a signing human.
Genuine two-tier job: if generative massing, sheet production, spec writing and permit paperwork are largely automated, the residual role is construction administration, RFI/change-order adjudication, consultant coordination and client program negotiation — tasks whose share of the day rises mechanically even with no capability change. Watch fee structures shifting from percentage-of-drawings toward CA-weighted and owner's-representative billing.
Contractual expansion of on-site duties: AIA B101 additional-services CA scopes, lender- or insurer-required site observation reports, and post-Surfside-style facade/structural inspection mandates (Florida SB 4-D milestone inspections, NYC LL 11) that name an architect or engineer for physical field verification and punch-list judgment.
State licensing boards (via NCARB/AIA model language) adopting rules that AI-generated construction documents require a licensed architect's stamp plus a documented human review log, and that a licensed architect cannot delegate code-compliance determinations to software — analogous to engineering boards' existing 'responsible charge' rules. Professional liability insurers (e.g. Victor/AIA-endorsed programs) adding endorsements that void coverage absent named-architect review of automated output pushes the same direction.
Narrow route only: high-end residential, cultural, and institutional clients who buy an identified authorial designer. This is a small share of the 106,770 and does not scale to the median commercial/production architect; no realistic mechanism makes developer clients pay a premium for human-drawn documents.
The limit. The stamp protects the signature, not the headcount. Liability and accountability levers can hold the score for the architects who sign, while total employment falls — a firm can stamp far more square footage per licensed person than before. Ceiling realistically ~72-75.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 10,240 | $99,710 +0% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,870 | $104,170 +5% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 4,460 | $81,790 -18% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 3,930 | $119,120 +20% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 3,780 | $126,550 +27% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 3,020 | $102,080 +3% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 2,970 | $100,610 +1% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,580 | $93,840 -5% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 660 | $129,640 +31% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 3,780 | $126,550 +27% |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 640 | $125,980 +27% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 61. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.