Time Machine

Facilities managers

Name: Facilities Managers: employment and wages since 1954
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Also called Facility manager, Building manager, Property operations manager, Plant manager, Director of facilities

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 156,180 US facilities managers, with median pay of $106,660 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 40,000 from 1954, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for facilities managers: BACnet/IP building automation systems, IoT sensors, and IWMS platforms, 2010 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 4.6% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

27.3% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Facilities managers: jobs and pay since 1954 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-3013

Chicago

Future History. "Facilities managers: jobs and pay since 1954." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-3013.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_11_3013, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Facilities managers: jobs and pay since 1954}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/11-3013}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

187519001925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Building Superintendent / Custodian Foreman (industrial-era building staff)

Known then as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds / Plant Engineer (corporate era)

Known then as VP of Building Maintenance / Building Manager / Plant Operations Manager

Known then as Facility Manager (IFMA-era professionalization)

Known then as Facility Manager / Facilities Director (grouped under Administrative Services Managers, BLS 11-3010)

Known then as Facilities Managers (BLS SOC 11-3013, standalone code)

Known today as Facilities Managers (BLS SOC 11-3013, standalone code)

Projected to still be called Facilities Managers (BLS SOC 11-3013, standalone code)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

156K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$106,660

Est.

≈ $103,925 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1954

September 1954: Harry Apple, owner of Trade Press Publishing in Milwaukee, launches "Building Operating Management" magazine, the first dedicated trade publication for building and facilities management professionals in the US. Apple recognized that the postwar building boom had created a critical mass of practitioners who needed industry-specific knowledge about air conditioning, fluorescent lighting, roofing, and mechanical systems. The magazine's launch is the earliest unambiguous milestone for facility management as a recognized trade, predating IFMA by 26 years.

Beat · 1971

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) is enacted, directly expanding the legal liability of building and facility managers for workplace safety. By 1973, OSHA had issued 3,032 citations for 16,738 violations totaling $425,738 in penalties across the country. For the first time, the person responsible for maintaining a building could face regulatory penalties for inadequate fire exits, unsafe equipment, or hazardous conditions. OSHA transformed facilities management from an operational convenience into a legal necessity at every employer of scale.

Beat · 1978

Herman Miller Research Corporation hosts a conference titled "Facility Influence on Productivity" in 1978. The event brings together George Graves of Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., Charles Hitch of Manufacturer's Bank in Detroit, and David Armstrong of Michigan State University. It is the first gathering explicitly framing facilities as a strategic driver of organizational performance rather than a cost center, and it directly seeds the formation of what will become IFMA.

Beat · 1980

May 1980: George Graves hosts a meeting in Houston, Texas to establish a formal organizational base for facility management. By the end of the meeting, the National Facility Management Association (NFMA) has a constitution, bylaws, and temporary officers. The first official NFMA meeting in October 1980 draws 47 participants, 25 of them direct members. In 1982, a growing Canadian chapter prompts a name change to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), incorporated in Ann Arbor, Michigan. IFMA becomes the profession's primary credentialing and advocacy organization for the following four decades.

Beat · 1993

1993: IFMA administers its first Certified Facility Manager (CFM) examination, covering eight facility management competencies. The CFM had been granted by application since 1992-93; the examination-based version establishes a defensible, standardized credential. The CFM becomes the primary professional certification for the field, and the credential's existence is a key argument in IFMA's eventual successful advocacy for a standalone BLS SOC code: a profession with its own certification is a profession, not just a job category.

Beat · 1998

August 1998: USGBC launches LEED 1.0 (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the first version of the certification system that would become the dominant US green building standard. The USGBC was founded in April 1993 by Rick Fedrizzi; LEED was developed in partnership with NRDC scientist Rob Watson. By 2024, over 195,000 LEED-certified buildings exist in 186 countries. The rise of LEED certifications makes facilities managers directly responsible for a building's environmental performance in a way that can be externally audited, adding sustainability expertise to the core FM competency set.

Beat · 2017

November 2017: The US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics assigns BLS SOC code 11-3013 specifically to "Facilities Managers" as a standalone occupation, separate from the broader "Administrative Services Managers" (11-3011) category. This is the result of a seven-year advocacy effort by IFMA and represents formal federal recognition of facility management as a distinct profession. It is the first time BLS separately counts and wages facilities managers in its national occupational statistics, producing the clean 11-3013 employment and wage series that begins in 2018.

Beat · 2020

March-April 2020: COVID-19 shutdowns empty commercial buildings overnight and then, over the following two years, create the largest facilities management challenge in modern memory: reopening office buildings safely for hybrid workforces. Facilities managers become frontline public health responders, responsible for air quality monitoring, occupancy controls, desk-reservation systems, sanitization protocols, and the physical reconfiguration of office spaces to accommodate distancing. The pandemic accelerates adoption of occupancy sensors, air quality dashboards, and space-management analytics by years. It also triggers the most significant decline in commercial office utilization since the Great Depression, and the enduring hybrid-work pattern that followed has made space optimization and lease-rightsizing a permanent, central part of the FM role.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1870

The person responsible for keeping a large building operational emerged as a distinct role in the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War, as the country's first generation of purpose-built commercial office buildings and industrial plants demanded someone who could manage steam-heating systems, coal deliveries, custodial staffs, and the increasingly complex mechanical infrastructure of a growing urban economy. The Equitable Life building in New York, completed in 1870, was among the first US office buildings to incorporate a hydraulic elevator and a central heating plant, and it needed someone on staff who understood both. Early titles varied: building superintendent, custodian foreman, plant engineer, superintendent of buildings and grounds. The work was unglamorous and the title was, as one 1950s trade magazine noted, "considered generally to be a non-productive operation" despite the fact that a failed boiler, a blocked fire exit, or a flooded basement could halt an entire organization. The post-World War II building boom, which created schools, hospitals, hotels, and office towers at a pace the country had never seen, transformed this informal role into a recognized specialty. "Building Operating Management" magazine launched in September 1954 as the first dedicated trade publication for the profession, reflecting a critical mass of practitioners who needed industry-specific knowledge about air conditioning, fluorescent lighting, stainless-steel fixtures, and increasingly complex mechanical systems. When IFMA was founded in 1980 in Houston as the National Facility Management Association, it crystallized a community of practice that already numbered in the tens of thousands nationwide, providing it with credentials, curricula, and the long organizational effort that eventually won a standalone BLS occupation code in 2017.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace facilities managers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+4.6%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 11-3013 (Facilities managers): 165.9 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 173.5 thousand in 2035, a change of +7.6 thousand (+4.6%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

27.3%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 11-3013.00 Facilities Managers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.273, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.091 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.455; GPT-4-rated β 0.318. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for facilities managers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare operational reports and sustainability disclosures by querying AI-powered dashboards that aggregate energy, water, waste, and maintenance data across the portfolio.

Prepare operational reports and sustainability disclosures by querying AI-powered dashboards that aggregate energy, water, waste, and maintenance data across the portfolio.^[6],[2]

Tools picking this up

OpenBlue (Johnson Controls) ↗Facilio AI Suite ↗

Where your edge is

Develop sustainability reporting literacy (ESG frameworks, LEED metrics, ENERGY STAR) so reports are defensible to auditors and executive stakeholders, not just auto-generated outputs.

AI is sitting alongside you hereOversee AI-optimized HVAC and energy management systems, reviewing automated setpoint adjustments and approving demand-response actions to hit both comfort and sustainability targets.

Oversee AI-optimized HVAC and energy management systems, reviewing automated setpoint adjustments and approving demand-response actions to hit both comfort and sustainability targets.^[7],[8],[6]

Tools picking this up

Hank (JLL) ↗OpenBlue (Johnson Controls) ↗

Where your edge is

Obtain Certified Energy Manager (CEM) certification and learn to read energy dashboards so you can override AI recommendations when occupancy or business events diverge from model assumptions.

AI is sitting alongside you herePlan and control facilities budgets using AI-driven spend analytics, identifying cost anomalies in maintenance contracts, utilities, and capital projects that exceed forecast ranges.

Plan and control facilities budgets using AI-driven spend analytics, identifying cost anomalies in maintenance contracts, utilities, and capital projects that exceed forecast ranges.^[6],[3]

Tools picking this up

IBM Maximo Application Suite ↗ServiceChannel AI ↗

Where your edge is

Develop financial acumen beyond tool outputs: understand depreciation schedules, capital vs. operating expenditure trade-offs, and how to build a business case for major infrastructure investment.

Where facilities managers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

General and Operations Managers
US median pay
$105,770 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+5%
Construction Managers
US median pay
$114,990 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+9.1%
Compliance Officers
US median pay
$80,730 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+3.8%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

General and Operations Managers

Senior facilities managers already manage cross-functional teams, vendor ecosystems, and multi-million-dollar budgets. Moving into a General and Operations Manager role broadens scope from physical plant to full business operations, typically requiring stronger P&L ownership and people-development skills.

What you'd add

· Financial modeling and P&L management
· Cross-functional team leadership beyond the facilities function
· Strategic planning and OKR-setting
· Executive stakeholder communication

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of facilities managers changed since 1870?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Manual ledgers + hands-on plant operations (pre-electrification era)
The building superintendent of the late 19th and early 20th century managed entirely through direct observation and hand-recorded logs: coal deliveries noted in ledgers, boiler pressures read from gauges, janitorial staff supervised in person. Steam-heating plants required someone who understood both mechanical systems and labor supervision. The introduction of central electric power and the elevator (Otis's 1852 safety elevator reached commercial scale in the 1870s-1880s) dramatically increased the mechanical complexity a building superintendent had to manage, but the fundamental tools remained analog: written work orders, maintenance logbooks, and direct rounds of the building.
Postwar mechanization: air conditioning, fluorescent lighting, automatic elevators
The postwar building boom of 1945 to 1973 transformed the building superintendent's portfolio from primarily custodial and heating-plant work into full-scale mechanical systems management. Central air conditioning moved from luxury to near-standard in commercial buildings; fluorescent lighting displaced incandescent fixtures on a massive scale; automatic, operator-less elevators replaced human-operated cabs (five high-speed automatic elevators could replace ten manual-operator cabs). By the early 1960s, building ceilings had evolved from plain enclosures into "complicated structures" housing lighting, ventilation, heating, fire protection, and acoustical systems simultaneously, all requiring coordinated maintenance. The first computerized maintenance scheduling system debuted around 1967, allowing facility managers at large organizations to automate equipment-maintenance calendars from mainframe terminals.
Effect on the work
Automatic elevators displaced elevator operators (a large occupation in the 1940s-1950s) but created ongoing maintenance and inspection demand that fell to facility managers. Air conditioning and fluorescent lighting expanded the scope of the facilities role without eliminating positions, increasing the technical complexity and compensation of the work.
Energy crisis response: computerized energy management systems (EMS) and building automation
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo doubled fuel prices and forced building owners to treat energy as a managed resource rather than a utility cost. Facility managers moved from the boiler room to the boardroom. Buildings were retrofitted with low-emissivity window coatings (reducing energy loss), computerized control systems that programmed HVAC, lighting, and elevator operations, and new lighting products using less energy. ASHRAE Standard 90-75 (1975) established the first national energy-conservation design standard for buildings. The energy crisis era elevated facilities management from a maintenance function into a strategic cost-control discipline.
Effect on the work
The energy crisis created new full-time specialties within facilities management, including dedicated energy managers and building automation technicians. The period also triggered a wave of facilities consolidation, as organizations that previously had separate janitorial, maintenance, and engineering staffs began centralizing these under a single facilities department head.
IFMA professionalization + PC-based CMMS + open-office space management
Three forces converged in the 1980s to make facilities management a recognized profession: the founding of IFMA in 1980 (the National Facility Management Association, renamed IFMA in 1982 when Canada joined), the arrival of affordable personal-computer-based CMMS software that let mid-size organizations track work orders and maintenance histories without a mainframe, and the open-office explosion. By 1984, nearly half of all US office space used moveable partition systems, and the facilities manager became responsible for space planning and reconfiguration at a scale previously reserved for architects. The decade also introduced indoor air quality as a formal facilities responsibility: one-third of US buildings were estimated to have poor IAQ by the early 1980s, with "sick building syndrome" forcing facilities managers to balance energy efficiency against ventilation. IFMA granted its first CFM (Certified Facility Manager) credentials by application in 1992-1993 and launched its first formal CFM examination in 1993, anchoring facilities management as a credentialed profession.
Effect on the work
PC-based CMMS software enabled one facilities manager to track and dispatch work orders that previously required a dedicated clerical staff. The open-office churn of the 1980s increased the volume of reconfiguration and move-management work, creating demand for additional facilities coordinators at large corporate sites. Net employment effect was modestly positive: the efficiency gains from CMMS were offset by scope expansion.
LEED certification, web-based CMMS, and integrated facilities management outsourcing
The US Green Building Council launched LEED 1.0 in August 1998, establishing for the first time a standardized, credible metric for building sustainability performance. Facilities managers who could earn and maintain LEED certification became commercially valuable: a LEED-certified building commanded higher rents, attracted institutional tenants, and satisfied emerging ESG commitments. Simultaneously, web-based CMMS platforms began replacing local-network PC software, enabling facilities teams to access work-order dashboards from any device and to manage multi-site portfolios without on-site servers. The 1990s and 2000s also saw the rise of integrated facilities management outsourcing: Sodexho Marriott Services (formed 1998), ISS, CBRE, and JLL built large platforms that consolidated food service, cleaning, maintenance, and operations management under single contracts, creating a new class of FM professional who managed outsourced service delivery rather than direct labor.
BACnet/IP building automation systems, IoT sensors, and IWMS platforms
The 2010s brought genuine convergence between IT and facilities for the first time. BACnet (a ASHRAE communication protocol first published in 1995) achieved mass adoption in building automation systems (BAS) during this decade, enabling HVAC, lighting, elevators, fire safety, and access control to communicate across a single IP network rather than separate proprietary wiring. IoT sensor costs fell by an order of magnitude, allowing facilities managers to instrument mechanical rooms, occupancy patterns, and air quality in ways previously reserved for the largest corporate campuses. Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) platforms, such as Archibus and IBM Maximo, unified space management, maintenance tracking, lease management, and sustainability reporting into a single software layer. The facilities manager of 2018 operated from dashboards that would have been unrecognizable to the plant engineer of 1975.
Effect on the work
IoT and BAS convergence reduced the head count of technicians needed for routine rounds and manual meter readings, while expanding demand for facilities managers who could interpret sensor data, calibrate alert thresholds, and manage the vendor ecosystems providing building automation contracts. The role bifurcated modestly: technician demand softened; manager/analyst demand held.
AI-driven predictive maintenance, smart building platforms, and hybrid-work space analytics
COVID-19 compressed a decade of facilities transformation into two years. Occupancy sensors, air quality monitors, and desk-reservation platforms became standard in any office attempting a hybrid-work return, handing facilities managers real-time utilization data that previously required manual space surveys. AI-powered predictive maintenance platforms (IBM Maximo Application Suite, ServiceChannel AI, JLL Hank, Johnson Controls OpenBlue, Facilio) moved from pilot to production deployment across major corporate portfolios. A Johnson Controls survey in 2026 found 67% of facilities managers already using AI for facility operations. The facilities manager of 2025 reads AI-generated failure-risk scores for building assets, reviews automated setpoint adjustments for HVAC optimization, and uses natural-language interfaces to query portfolio-wide maintenance costs. The core judgment: which alert requires human response, which vendor relationship requires renegotiation, which compliance gap requires escalation, all remain human responsibilities.
Effect on the work
BLS projects 3.8% net employment growth for 11-3013 from 2024-2034, driven by sustainability mandates, aging infrastructure, and the skilled oversight that AI building systems require. AI is augmenting the facilities manager rather than substituting for the role, partly because the regulatory liability for building safety and environmental compliance cannot be delegated to software.

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Facilities Managers employment and pay by year

On record since1870

Latest US employment156,180 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$106,660 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+4.6% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 9 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1954	40,000	n/a	Est., FacilitiesNet Researched context	Report
1973	80,000	n/a	Est., FacilitiesNet Researched context	Report
1982	n/a	$28,000	Est., BLS Monthly Labor Review Researched context	Report
1992	200,000	n/a	Est., IFMA History Researched context	Report
2021	101,230	$97,930	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	116,980	$99,030	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	131,400	$102,340	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	141,090	$104,690	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	156,180	$106,660	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where facilities managers go next

General and Operations Managers

Manual ledgers + hands-on plant operations (pre-electrification era)Manual ledgers + hands-on plant operati…1870–1945

Postwar mechanization: air conditioning, fluorescent lighting, automatic elevatorsPostwar mechanization1945–1973

Energy crisis response: computerized energy management systems (EMS) and building automationEnergy crisis response1973–1985

IFMA professionalization + PC-based CMMS + open-office space managementIFMA professionalization + PC-based CMM…1980–1998

LEED certification, web-based CMMS, and integrated facilities management outsourcingLEED certification1998–2010

BACnet/IP building automation systems, IoT sensors, and IWMS platformsBACnet/IP building automation systems2010–2020

AI-driven predictive maintenance, smart building platforms, and hybrid-work space analyticsAI-driven predictive maintenance2020–present

Facilities Managers employment and pay by year

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