we learned about the idea of supply and demand, we learned that as supply shrinks demand and demand goes up, there's there's this correlation, right? When the supply shrinks and the demand goes up? Well, we expect that there's going to be more demand, which means that prices are going to rise for that, when there's a lot of supply and there's little demand, we're going to expect that the prices of things are going to come down. Now, again, doing a quick search of different articles, I came across an article from the American Medical Association that indeed confirms that there is a shortage of doctors currently and projected into the future. Now the numbers of the shortage of doctors is all over the map. We have any estimates anywhere in this particular article, there's estimates between 17, about 18,040 8000 primary care physicians that there's going to be short of in the next 10 years, well, that's quite a that's quite a spread, that's about 18,000 40,000. That's a that's over double in terms of their margin of error. So either way you look at it, that's a very large number. So we can say that, indeed, it appears the United States is experiencing a large shortage of medical professionals, particularly doctors. Now let's look at architects is architects also experiencing, is there an abundance of architectural professionals? Or is there a shortage? What we discover again, and there's less data on this, unfortunately. But according to my and this is going to be my own anecdotal experience, working with hundreds of architecture firm owners, particularly small, firm owners, and what I'm hearing from different professionals in the industry, that indeed, there is a shortage of architectural professionals, particularly mid career professionals. So people who were in the age group of their late 30s, to their mid to upper 40s, these people are like the sweet spot, they were in there, they were starting out their career, or maybe just had gotten started in their career back in the big Great Recession of 2009, when we lost so many architectural professionals. So most architecture firm owners that I talked to, will tell me at this time that they could probably use an extra person. So let's look at this number a different way. Let's say that right now, according to estimates, and again, these are all over the map. There's anywhere from 65,000 on the high end to 22,000 architectural practices in the United States. 65,000 sounds a bit high to me. 22,000 sounds more reasonable, but also a bit low. Now let's just assume that a quarter of these practices could actually bring on an extra person right now let's say there's enough work in the industry, where one quarter of these practices could bring on one additional person, which would be a shortage. So let's see how many people that would be. If we take 65,000 And we take a fourth of that. That's a shortage of 16,250 Architects. That sounds like a number that's too high. Now we look at the 22,000 number, we get a shortage of about 5500. So the question is, could the architectural market here in the United States could absorb 5000 professionals mid career professionals in architecture? My guess is that probably it could at this time, right? There's enough work happening right now, in the industry, when you look at most small firm owners, the fact that they're working probably more than 40 hours a week, which means that the firms are have more work that they can handle deadlines, and there's there's waiting lists for architects to take on projects, it definitely shows that there's some sort of shortage in the architecture industry. Now, it may not be as large as the shortage of medical professionals. So certainly, the demand and supply or lack thereof for architects in the industry, this could be one of the reasons why architects earn less than doctors, however, does it really does it really account for the great disparity because when we see we can see the both industries have a shortage. And yet architects are basically earning about a third what doctors are earning. So this causes us let's dig a little deeper here. The next thing we can look at is the nature of the work and the responsibility involved in the position. So certainly, jobs and careers generally speaking, that require a high level of precision, a high level of responsibility, a high level of risk are generally going to come with greater reward. For instance, if you're a nuclear engineer working in a nuclear power plant, your pay is generally going to be very high because it's highly specialized. And there's a great deal of responsibility upon you. As you know, if you've seen the Simpsons and seen Homer definitely requires a very high level of attention to detail and a high level of integrity. All right, now let's get back to architects and doctors. Doctors do they have a stressful work environment. Indeed, doctors oftentimes depending on whether they're an ER doc or primary care physician, they can be working let's let's look at the ER Doc's these doctors are, of course, the parent of some of the most hardworking doctors in the medical field in the United States, they can work shifts of 12 hours at a time, four days a week. So they're on their feet a lot. They're running around high stress environments. And let's face it, a lot of these doctors are dealing with life or death situations. They're dealing with trauma. They're dealing with people, they're having hysterical meltdowns. I was just thinking about last last month, my kids were in a major accident. Fortunately, all of them are okay. But we did spend three or four hours in the emergency room. And it was mayhem in there people rushing back and forth. People hollering in the hallway, you know, nurses running around distraught parents, not to mention people that were in critical condition who basically were hanging on for dear life. So this is a highly stressful environment. So we can say that, as in terms of overall stress, perhaps someone who was working in an ER emergency room is going to experience more stress than your average architectural job. However, when we look at jobs like radiologists, or people like perhaps primary care physicians, a lot of times these are much less pressing, these are jobs that have a much less level of stress. And oftentimes, they can get by working four and a half, four and a half days per week. So they may even take the afternoons on Friday off much less demanding. So I would say that in this case, based upon this, we look at architecture, what's the risk associated with architectural indeed? And how stressful is it? Having worked in an architectural practice? I know that architecture indeed can be stressful around deadlines, it can be stressful trying to meet client demands, it can be stressful when you're having to work on a project that you know, is losing money. And what's the risk that architects take? What is the actual the risk that architects take upon themselves in the in the in the um, in their profession? Well, I would say that it's it's, it's not a it's not a small risk, right. architects do shoulder an important responsibility safeguarding the health and wellness of the public, as a professional architects know that they will be held, they can be held personally liable for mistakes. This is why we have errors and omissions insurance, just like doctors have malpractice insurance. So we can see that in terms of the nature of work. When we look at stress alone, we might say that, er, doctors take the cake on that one. When we look at other stressful positions within the medical field as well as architecture we can say that perhaps architecture might be as stressful or even more stressful than a primary care physician or a doctor that might have a less taxing and less stressful position. How about the ultimate responsibility they take on? Well, one thing about doctors that oftentimes doctors are working with life or death situations. So I would say that the teeter totter the scale is going to tip over to the doctors on this one on having a higher immediate sort of responsibility. However, if we look at the long term responsibility of architecture, this gets a bit obscured meaning that architects and their designs on the way that design buildings in coordination with engineers can have a very large impact that may only be revealed over time, maybe not immediately, right? If my son goes in with some sort of traumatic injury, we're gonna get the outcome of that very, very quickly. However, with an architectural project, the results of the designs that you put in or the design mistakes you make, or maybe design choices that you make aren't going to be seen for many years down the line. And so again, this can muddy the water, about the nature and responsibility of the work. But when we look at it overall, I'm going to say that the doctors take the high stress and the immediate responsibility on this one, although I would say that architects are close behind, because let's face it, being able to construct a building safely, being able to make sure that all the fire codes are met, being able to make sure that a building has the proper circulation, being able to make sure that the mechanical systems in the building are adequate and appropriate. Everything that goes into a building, how can we downplay that? Like, is this not a great value to society? Is is not hugely important? And could this not impact the lives of hundreds of people, if not 1000s, we look at terrible disasters, like the condo in Florida that collapsed. Obviously, there are structural failures that happen there. We hear about sometimes clubs being overloaded and collapsing, we hear about hundreds of people dying at a time. And then we have things like the World Trade Center now who could have foreseen that that actually would have happened. But we can see that there was a great loss of life with that. So we can see that architects are not far behind in terms of the importance of what they do to safeguard the life, health, safety of the public. So as we look at these, we've looked at education and training so far, which the doctors take just by a hair, we look at demand and supply, which may be a wash, although I think doctors may take it on this one as well. And then we look at the nature of the work certainly in terms of the more immediate concerns, doctors went out on this one as well. However, does this really account for the great disparity that we see in architects salaries versus versus doctors? Well, perhaps it doesn't. But when we look at the next category, which is perceived value, perhaps things start to make more sense. So one thing to consider about the medical industry is that there's a lot of forces and a lot of variables that have resulted in the salaries that doctors earn.