ARCHITECT's Katharine Keane reports that the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has released its complete NCARB By The Numbers annual report outlining its 2017 statistics on architectural education, time to licensure, diversity in architecture, and more. NCARB collected the data from the architectural licensing boards of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Below are highlights from the release.
As previewed earlier this year, the number of licensed architects in the U.S. rose to 113,554 in 2017. This number represents is a 10 percent increase since 2008, exceeding the pace of growth of the overall U.S. population, which rose by 8 percent over the same period. According to the data, there is now approximately one architect for ever 2,900 people in the country. (However, many architects retain their licenses after retiring, which could impact this statistic.)
While women still only make up one-third of licensed architects as of 2017, they are completing core requirements for licensure more than a year before their male counterparts. According to NCARB, it takes female candidates 11.8 years to complete these steps, while male candidates take approximately 12.9 years.
