Architects working more over last quarter

Good news for the nation’s construction sector: architects’ workloads are increasing, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In the last three months the Architecture Billings Index has shown increases in work levels at architectural firms, the Journal said. In January, the Index, provided by the American Institute of Architects, showed a score of 50.9, up from a score of 51.0 in December.

The increase does not necessarily translate directly to new development, but how much work architects have is a useful bellweather for semtiment in the real estate industry as a whole, the Journal said.

By sector, the greatest increase in work was for architects working on apartment buildings, which had a score of 52.6 on the Billings Index for the last three months. [WSJ]