Hasta La Ideas

If history has taught us anything, it’s that we should all be as cautiously optimistic as the AIA‘s Chief Economist, Kermit Baker. Last month, you’ll remember that the association’s Billing Index was released and, hooray!, we were back to the the numbers posted pre-market collapse. Baker was perhaps at his most optimistic about this news, but per usual, added a warning: “…it is far too early to think we are out of the woods.” And right he was, as the new Billing Index has been released and it’s back to falling, this time 3.3 points, or to 42.8 (the joyous month prior, it had been at 46.1, which was nearing that coveted 50 point, which means more projects than billings). But while Baker blames this slight dip on uncertainty still lingering in the industry, the news isn’t all bad. Across the pond in the UK, the Architects Journal reports that unemployment numbers in architecture dropped in the period between October to November, meaning that either a) architecture firms are hiring again, albeit slowly, or b) the unemployed found work doing something else that isn’t necessarily in their profession/interest. So maybe not the best silver lining to end this post on, but hey, it’s something.

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