When writing our market updates, it’s always interesting to look back at what we wrote the previous year and see how things have changed. In August 2022 our blog said:
“With the daily news presenting a barrage of negative stories from Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and now the impending UK recession, it would be natural to assume the architectural jobs market is equally depressed and there aren’t any exciting opportunities to get your career back on track following the pandemic… The unusual situation at the moment is that although interest rates are rapidly increasing, we are still receiving a record number of jobs and practices are finding it especially difficult to recruit new staff.”
One year on, the situation feels remarkably similar. Thankfully, inflation is now coming down, but the interest rate rises have had a negative impact on the housing market. Over the last few months, we have started to see quite a few firms who have specialised in this sector, start to make redundancies and the Future Workload index from the RIBA Future Trends Survey results has also turned negative.
Thankfully, however, although there are still predictions of a recession, the jobs market in other areas has proved remarkably resilient and is still incredibly busy. There appear to be two factors at play here. Firstly, since Brexit and Covid, a large number of EU architectural staff left the UK and there is now a skills shortage for, in particular, Part 2s/3s. Secondly, the luxury end of the market has been largely unaffected by higher interest rates and the majority of our current roles are working on high-end private residential projects looking for candidates with specific sector experience.
Although salaries are probably not increasing at the same rate as inflation, for practices struggling to recruit the right staff with experience in their sector, there does appear to be some negotiation and it still feels like a candidate market.
If you have recently been made redundant or you feel that your career has stalled, please email your CV and portfolio to info@9bcareers.com and we’ll call you straight back to discuss potential options further.
A selection of our latest roles split by salary can be seen below:
£30,000 - £35,000
£35,000 - £40,000
£40,000 - £50,000
£50,000 - £60,000
£60,000 - £70,000
£70,000+