The Unemployment Rate For Landscape Architects/Designers

Can we add to that the amount of LA’s working half time or without benefits or on contract basis.  Of the 20 or so coworkers let go with me back in 2009 only 3 are working in firms and they are not even at full time.  For those of us with 10 years or more experience, is there really any hope of ever finding permanent employment within a firm? have we all been replaced with inexperienced cheap labor straight out of school?  I feel like I am watching the funeral of my own career.

Not directly any help on the main question but LA was not in the top troubled fields listed in this article (maybe we’re too small to be visible?):

http://www.classesandcareers.com/advisor/the-10-worst-college-majors/

I agree we would be yoked to the general planning/architecture area’s current and near-future fate, but I don’t know the best forecast for what that is. Reading the link however, I couldn’t help but notice music therapy being in such bad shape, when not long ago I had been on art therapy discussions (interested due to a relative in that field) and the art therapists were in misery over how music therapists were “so much better organized and recognized” etc. Seems like everyone in a creative realm thinks the grass might be greener somewhere else. In reality, it’s the overall water level. If you aren’t picked as the lead profession for mental health or construction in good times, that won’t reverse in bad times. And even a recovery may take longer to ripple out and benefit specialists, sad to say.

How do we measure it? Supposedly 21% of us are self employed, 6% work for government, and 51% for  “architectural, engineering, and related services”. Where the other 22% are seems a mystery.

Self employed people don’t show up in the unemployment line very often. They just tend to work a whole lot less and sometimes subsidize with a second job. I don’t know how that shows up statistically.

What about all of the people who were laid off and now work in another field? If they are no longer in the field are they part of the statistics?

These numbers are like betting odds or a stock market prospectus. You might have a better grip on your chances, but you win or lose by exactly what opportunities that you find, what you wager, and how the exact game plays out..

mauiBob, they have always tried to take over our jobs….we just have to continue to do our job  better than they do. I think a lot of the problem, besides the economy, is the weaker education students are getting now makes our profession doable by anyone….I interviewed some students recently and learned, much to my shock, that they no longer teach planting design or grading and drainage. These were always skills we did better than anyone! It looks like the schools are preping for LEED only, again something anyone can get.  I worked seven years as senior LA for a huge AE firm and I held seminars for the architects and engineers before the took their exams on how to site plan and do grading plans…most never had courses in either…So, we need to keep relevant by having unique skills…..what are they teaching that is unique for us now?

There is another trend….I don’t want to say “ominous” but certainly a challenge, and that is inside 4 year (and even 2 year) horticulture programs. “Way back” when I was starting out, horticulture and LA had a kind of solid dividing line, with more botanical science and maintenance business focus inside horticulture and more history, art, and civil engineering focus inside LA. We all knew that within the green industry, some landscape installation providers would pencil out plans, but mostly for the residential scale. They stopped short of major grading challenges, for example, and most public and corporate funded work would involve an engineering or LA firm (or at least LA as sub consultant).

Lately I’ve run into more what would have been called horticulture curricula being housed in some “environmental” campus department, and also having a concentration in “landscape design” that is quite a bit more elevated than designing planting beds.  I doubt it is a complete overlap with LA, but they study with software and even sketch-up. Also there is a big green industry convention in my own town that makes an entire afternoon of instruction available as an option for helping existing businesses learn various forms of software techniques.

The overlap may just lead to better LS contractor output and we should celebrate that, but we also need to be aware that once a project has an engineer, if the landscape contractor can appear to be able to illustrate anything at all attractive (and when are plantings not attractive?), he/she may just seem like a perfectly good rounding out, hence the combination all that is needed. LA’s have to have a message that is positive about where our field will still fit in…..or should we just plan on fusing with that emergent education (upgrade of horticulture) and dissolving away our separate title? We might need to do some course swapping to define the new realm, but it might be good to have a merged bigger population with a combined strong image of “who to turn to” to ensure that LA isn’t wiped out by cost cutting.

Have you tried to work in a civil engineer’s office as civil engineering staff rather than a specialist LA? We can bring a lot to the table in terms of skill set that is very well suited for local civil firms. They do more site planning than anything else. Their interns have more experience measuring vibrations on bridges, compaction from test borings, and calculating the displacement of water by an aircraft carrier than they do drawing site plans.

If you go there to try to sell the idea of having an LA, you’ll get no where. If you go there telling them that you are a site designer (if you have the skills to back it up), you have a shot. If you spent your undergrad time looking at wind turbines, LEED accreditation, and green roofs, few people will care.

Your job opportunities are based on what you studied, what your attitude is, how it fits into what is actually being proposed and built, and your ability to present those skill sets.

I beat out two engineers for my last job and they had almost no interest in my landscape architecture stamp … just my site planning resume. …. and I came out of a civil office before that. My first office job was with a small civil office with no civil experience. I did have lots of time drawing plans in ACAD at school – that was enough.