Billings Moderate, Still Positive In September

October 20, 2022

Billings Moderate, Still Positive In September

The Architecture Billings Index score for September was 51.7, dropping 1.6 points from the August score of 53.3. The new Project Inquiries index was 53.6, down from 57.9 last month. The Design Contracts index scored 50.7, retracting from 52.3. Scores above 50 indicate increased demand for design services.

“While billings in the Northeast region and the Institutional sector reached their highest pace of growth in several years, there appears to be emerging weakness in the previously healthy multifamily residential and commercial/industrial sectors, both of which saw a decline in billings for the first time since the post-pandemic recovery began,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD.

Regional averages for September, 2022:

	August	September
West	50.2	51.6
South	52.9	51.7
Midwest	51.4	52.1
Northeast	49.8	54.6

Sector index breakdown for September, 2022:

	August	September
Commercial/industrial	51.2	49.6
Mixed practice	51.2	50.3
Multi-family residential	52.0	47.9
Institutional	52.0	58.9

Baker continued, “Across the broader architecture sector, backlogs at firms remained at a robust 7.0 months as of the end of September, still near record-high levels since we began collecting this data regularly more than a decade ago.”

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For more information about the Architectural Billings Index, visit the AIA website.