Percent of Firms in 2017 that Offered a Salary Increase to Architecture Staff upon Licensure

Even more firms are now rewarding staff for attaining licensure than they were just a couple of years ago: 80 percent, up from 74 percent in 2015. However, salary premiums are not the same across different sizes of firms—64 percent of those with 100 to 249 employees and 39 percent with 250 or more employees offer salary premiums for licensure, compared to an average of 81 percent for smaller firms. There was also a big change in the size of the salary premiums: While the share of firms that provided a meager 1 percent premium was constant from 2015 to 2017 (staying at 9 percent), there was a 7-point jump in the share of firms who offered a much more generous 10 percent or more increase—from 11 percent of firms in 2015 to 18 percent in 2017.