salary
The best news of all is that for the most part, salaries are up from last year, junior employees included. Graphic designers with less than five years of experience stand to earn 19% more than they did last year, and UX designers with that same experience level can make about 15% more. Only the salaries for product designers—the job category that saw the most significant drop in the number of postings—were down, albeit negligibly, with a 2% dip in their (already high) compensation.
In fact, product designers continue to earn the most among the design categories we studied. This may not be surprising, given the fundamental role they play in tech. If you’re a graphic designer, though, you're probably not shocked to learn that you will likely earn less than other types of designers do.
Meanwhile, when you compare the salary-to-experience ratios of the various design disciplines in our dataset, some important findings emerge. For example, architects make less additional money per year of experience than any other kind of designer does. And though starting salaries for product and UX designers are at near parity, they're nowhere close by the time these designers reach the senior stages of their careers: Product designers with at least eight years of experience earn 28% more than their UX counterparts.
SALARY CHANGE, YEAR OVER YEAR
SALARY-TO-EXPERIENCE RATIO
SALARY-TO-EXPERIENCE RATIO
The best news of all is that for THE MOST PART, salaries are up from last year, junior employees included. Graphic designers with less than five years of experience stand to earn 19% more than they did last year, and UX designers with that same experience level can make about 15% more. Only the salaries for product designers—the job category that saw the most significant drop in the number of postings—were down, albeit negligibly, with a 2% dip in their (already high) compensation.
In fact, product designers continue to earn the most among the design categories we studied. This may not be surprising, given the fundamental role they play in tech. If you’re a graphic designer, though, you're probably not shocked to learn that you will likely earn less than other types of designers do.
Meanwhile, when you compare the salary-to-experience ratios of the various design disciplines in our dataset, some important findings emerge. For example, architects make less additional money per year of experience than any other kind of designer does. And though starting salaries for product and UX designers are at near parity, they're nowhere close by the time these designers reach the senior stages of their careers: Product designers with at least eight years of experience earn 28% more than their UX counterparts.