Category: MAC
Impact of education and experience on salary
While a first degree will definitely improve your earning potential, a second or third may not. On the other hand, experience is rewarded with greater pay, regardless of expertise.
Salary by Area of Expertise
Overall, wages in the creative professions have kept pace with inflation, but shown little growth beyond that — with the primary exception of Interaction Design, which has increased dramatically in pay since 2006. This keeps with anecdotal indications that IxD professionals have become extremely sought after, in part due to the lucrative and growing mobile devices market. Design Management has also enjoyed significant increases, perhaps riding on the recent vogue for “design thinking” in the business world.
Regional Salary Variations
In the USA and Canada, salaries are off or nearly flat in most regions, with the notable exception of the Pacific Northwest, which saw a nearly 17% jump in real salaries last year. This continues its dominant status from the previous seven years, when the region enjoyed an overall 12% increase.
Which Work Environments Pay the Best
Not academia — it offers the lowest compensation, across all disciplines (though typically better job security), while freelancers fare noticeably better. The top earners in most cases are those with staff jobs, whether in-house or at a consultancy. Significantly, IxD consultants made a lot more than their corporate kin, though rough economic times may change that, as nervous clients move the work inside or to individual contractors.
Where Designers Work
Web and Graphic Designers live up to their reputation as the most likely to work independently, while Industrial Designers cluster in consultancies. Across the board, though, more respondents work in corporate environments than all others combined.
Global Purchasing Power Comparisons
Applying the “Big Mac Index” adjustment to creative salaries averaged over the last eight years reveals the nations where a designer’s salary goes a long way — Hong Kong, Australia, Taiwan and the USA top the list, with South Africa, Russia and Taiwan not far behind. South America on the other hand seems a particularly tough place to make it as a designer, despite an abundance of exceptional work coming from the region in recent years.
