Commercial and Industrial Designers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Commercial and Industrial Designers offer sit among all 30,250 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 30,250 Commercial and Industrial Designers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Michigan, where the location quotient is 2.99, meaning the occupation holds 2.99 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 4,530 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 30.6% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $85,450 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($134,840) is 2.7 times the 10th percentile ($49,390), a gap of $85,450 a year. The mean of $88,000 sitting above the median of $79,450 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Commercial and Industrial Designers runs from the $106,720 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (4,530 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Commercial and Industrial Designers stands number 481 by employment and number 213 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations, the group median wage is $66,220 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 20% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.5% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 14 of the 42 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $79,450, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,140 jobs, 7.1% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $75,480 a year, against $109,410 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Commercial and Industrial Designers paycheck, gross, is $3,056 every two weeks on an annual $79,450, which is $6,621 a month and $1,528 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($62,040) to the 75th ($103,170) is worth $41,130 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $87,395 would sit between the median ($79,450) and the 75th percentile ($103,170), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $62,040, is $17,410 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Camera Operators, Television, Video, and Film, Broadcast Announcers and Radio Disc Jockeys, Media and Communication Workers, All Other, Special Effects Artists and Animators, Broadcast Technicians, Fashion Designers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.