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NCARB releases 2020 demographic data

In Brief

NCARB releases 2020 demographic data

(Sven Mieke/Via Unsplash)

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) recently released its 2020 NCARB by the Numbers report, which analyzes and presents demographic information collected by the professional licensing organization.

This year’s edition, which documents many of the same racial and gender inequalities from previous reports and arrives at a time when those inequalities are receiving renewed and widespread criticism, has a new section: NCARB and NOMA. Here, the board has partnered with the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) to look into the results from a survey with thousands of respondents in the field. The survey data presents disparities between men and women, as well as between BIPOC and white people in how young professionals are able to pay for registration exams and study materials, find role models in their firms, and more.

The demographics presented in the rest of the survey follow similar patterns found in earlier editions of the annual report. Diversity is increasing among younger professionals in some areas, but the population of licensed architects remains overwhelmingly white—91 percent of certificate holders are white while only 76 percent of the United States population is. Only 2 out of every 5 new architects are women, for example, and while diversity has improved somewhat, it’s worth digging into where licensing has been lagging.

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