03 · Intelligence
Most AEC comp models lag the offers being made in private by a year or more. We close the gap.
Public wage surveys publish annually, and they land months after the offer market they're meant to describe. Most small AEC firms can't afford to staff an internal research function to catch that gap. We rent that function to them — discipline by discipline, market by market.
The research function
Refreshed at the cadence of the offers, not the cadence of the survey.
We hold a working read on the disciplines and markets our clients hire in. The read is built from public filings, federal labor series, and the conversations we run week over week with senior engineers and architects across the central United States. The specific sources behind any one engagement are internal — they don't appear on this page, and they don't appear in deliverables we don't own.
What lands in a client's hands is a current picture: who is paying what, who is leaving whom, and what the firms quietly absorbing their talent are offering beyond cash.
What we track
We don't publish our sources. We'll publish the scale.
The working read behind a diagnostic is drawn from a standing base we maintain year-round — not assembled the week you call. The figures below are that base. They are the volume; the specific sources stay internal, for the same reason your competitor's read stays internal too.
- 3,302
- Industry-ranked AEC firm records under tracking
- 80
- Metropolitan markets under active coverage
- 14,635
- Federal labor-market observations, refreshed on release
- 585
- Structured candidate conversations logged · 2024–2026
The misalignment
What you're offering ≠ what they're hearing.
Across five axes, what AEC employers describe themselves as offering and what candidates describe themselves as wanting are using the same words to mean different things. The result is not a values gap. It is a translation gap — and it is costing firms offers they think they are winning.
Base salary anchored to prior survey + annual cost-of-living adjustment.
What candidates report wanting
Total cash visible per pay period — base, regular bonus cadence, sign-on, retention.
Employers treat band as the answer. Candidates increasingly treat band as a starting point and read cadence, transparency, and review timing as the actual signal.
Why a small AEC firm shouldn't try to staff this in-house
For most of the last twenty years, AEC labor markets were stable enough that an annual comp survey plus a few peer phone calls was enough. That window closed a few cycles ago, and most firms under five hundred employees have not staffed up to match.
A small AEC firm does not have a department, a budget, or a discipline expert sitting in-house to run this kind of analysis. Hiring one costs more than the analysis is worth. So the gap stays open, and the firm continues to set comp from data that is one or two refresh cycles behind the offers their candidates are already considering.
That is the gap we rent into. Same analytical depth most firms can't afford to build. Delivered at the cadence of the offers your competitors are making in private — not the cadence of next year's survey.