Archinect - News

"GSAPP 2012 - 6 Months After Graduation" Employment Status Report

2013-03-05T18:53:00-05:00

An independently-led survey of graduates from Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation was recently conducted, to assess the overall status of employment. The infographic-rich document can be seen below.

“GSAPP 2012 - 6 Months After Graduation” is an attempt to capture the state of our class in our first year of post-gradschool life. Did we finally find a job? Did we move to another city? Another country? How many hours a week are we working? How much are we making? What software are we finally using? These are some of the questions this survey tries to answer, and in doing so, it may also serve as a snapshot of the architectural profession itself, how it treats its newest members and how it is doing in this fragile economy.

The survey was made up of 17 questions and was voluntarily responded by 63 graduates from the Masters of Architecture program at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.

US economy adds 146K jobs, rate falls to 7.7%

2012-12-07T12:18:00-05:00

Companies added 146,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent - the lowest in nearly four years - from 7.9 percent in October. The rate declined mainly because more people stopped looking for work and weren't counted as unemployed.

Debating the Root Causes of Zombie Infrastructure

2012-06-14T17:59:00-04:00

For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls... In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, as Nate Berg reported this week, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value.

College Student Pieces His Way To Lego Mastery

2012-04-04T13:26:00-04:00

Only four people in the United States carry the official designation of Lego Master Model Builder. And 23-year-old Andrew Johnson of Illinois is the newest — and youngest — to earn the title.

The Earnings Curve: Perspectives on Career Compensation

2012-03-19T18:25:36-04:00

The Learner stage generally lasts about three years. Entry level compensation starts at roughly $36,966 and can grow to $46,701 during that time — an increase of 26 percent, or nearly 9 percent per year. The starting base is small, but the growth potential is large in percentage terms.

Freelancers Are the New Pirates

2012-03-01T14:44:00-05:00

Look, the infrastructure of industry is broken. It’s time to consider going pirate, setting sail, and making your own rules. Try life as your own boss, on your own voyage. No daily commute. No salad bar at 12:15. No cc’ing about the meeting. As Sara Horowitz, executive director of the Freelancers Union, puts it: “You can either be in the past and mired in bureaucracy in these big nonfunctioning institutions or you can be a swashbuckler.”

Best Jobs 2012: Architect. Really?

2012-02-29T13:14:00-05:00

With steady migration to Sun Belt states and many baby boomers retiring in the next few years, there should be an uptick in demand for new homes, healthcare facilities, and office buildings. This means the job market for architects should remain solid. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects architect employment growth of 23.1 percent between 2010 and 2020, adding 31,300 more professionals to the 135,400 already-existing jobs in this field.

Why jobs require cities

2012-02-02T17:48:00-05:00

If we’re going to find jobs in the U.S. and the rest of the world, they’re going to have to be found in exactly the area where China is finding them — tertiary industry, or services. How do you create service-industry jobs? By investing in cities and inter-city infrastructure like smart grids and high-speed rail. Services flourish where people are close together and can interact easily with the maximum number of people. If we want to create jobs in America, we should look to services...

North Dakota is desperate to find workers

2011-10-19T13:59:48-04:00

Williston used to build about five new homes a year. This year, Williston built 2,000 new homes. Next year, they're aiming for 4,000. SHAWN WENKO: This is similar to the California gold rush. Shawn Wenko is the Workforce Development Coordinator for the city of Williston. He shows me a dozens of ceremonial "ground breaking" shovels stacked in the corner of the office. He says they used to make special shovels for every groundbreaking, but they've had to go generic because of all the projects.

Happen to be an architect and out of work? – Cry no more, North Dakota is your promised land.

The GOOD Guide to Hustlin': How To Know if Your Internship is Worth It

2011-09-14T18:14:57-04:00

Internships are pretty sweet deals for employers, especially during a recession that’s forced them to lay off thousands of workers. They get to cull from a pile of résumés from increasingly qualified and well-rounded students and graduates to choose interns to come work at their company for free for two, four, or six months. Where interns may have once been confined to the coffeemaker, post-grad interns may now find themselves overworked...

Is Steve Jobs the Model for a Revived Economy?

2011-08-30T18:22:19-04:00

Steve Jobs has the right name for what's missing in America's economy. Does he also represent the way back to prosperity? We look at his record at Apple and its influence in the US and around the world.

KCRW's "To the Point" addresses Steve Jobs' attention to innovation and integration of design into Apple's business model, and how that can improve the state of today's horrible job market.

Foxconn will bring on 1 million robots in 3 years to replace workers

2011-08-01T11:24:27-04:00

Foxconn’s founder and chariman Terry Gou said the company will replace an unspecified amount workers with one million robots in three years. Foxconn is the Asian manufacturer that is responsible for many components inside of Apple, Sony, and Nokia’s devices.

For a related discussion check The Diminishing Returns of Technology.

NEW: Archinect's Online Job Application Center

2011-07-28T15:00:00-04:00

Archinect is working hard to connect hiring firms with job seekers. In tumultuous economic times, it may become hard for a firm that seeks to employ new talent to find the right match among hundreds of received applications. That is why we recently launched a brand new service for job advertisers and job applicants alike, the Archinect Online Job Application Center.

We designed the service with both ends of the, often tedious, application process in mind.

JOB APPLICANTS can:

apply for any job listing on Archinect that uses the new service, with only a couple mouse clicks, directly from the listing page
personalize the application with a cover letter
use their Archinect profile to provide employment and education history, show off their skills and of course use the projects on their profile as work samples
save money by not having to mail out expensive hard-copy portfolios or exceeding your internet bandwidth
easily keep track of their sent out application...

The State of Architecture in 2018: If you build it, they will come

2011-05-20T13:18:53-04:00

According to Future-Jobs-O-Matic, Marketplace's career forecasting tool, the future of architects in 2018 will be bright, very bright, it seems: "Jobs for architects are expected to grow faster than average. Driving the growth: rising demand for senior centers and green buildings. Competition at prestigious firms is expected to be intense, but if you're the super creative type, you'll be in demand. Calatrava who?"

Can't wait for the future to come? Check out hundreds of openings - and maybe find your future job - in our Archinect Jobs section.

Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges

2011-04-03T18:29:56-04:00

ON college campuses, the annual race for summer internships, many of them unpaid, is well under way. But instead of steering students toward the best opportunities and encouraging them to value their work, many institutions of higher learning are complicit in helping companies skirt a nebulous area of labor law.