Designers, All Other Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Designers, All Other offer sit among all 9,680 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

With 9,680 jobs nationally, Designers, All Other make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 2,850 of those jobs, the top three states hold 48.3%, and the deepest concentration sits in Louisiana (location quotient 5.39, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $131,950, which is 3.6 times the $36,530 at the 10th, a difference of $95,420 annually. Because the mean wage ($78,000) sits above the median ($66,220), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Designers, All Other runs from the $98,340 median in Illinois down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (2,850 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Designers, All Other stands number 690 by employment and number 319 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.5% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 11 of the 29 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $66,220, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 1,500 jobs, 15.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 41 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $83,860 a year, against $97,720 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,518 a month before tax, $2,547 biweekly, $1,273 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,850) to the 75th ($95,330) is worth $48,480 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $72,842 would sit between the median ($66,220) and the 75th percentile ($95,330), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,850, is $19,370 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: Broadcast Technicians, Fashion Designers, Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials, Athletes and Sports Competitors, Sound Engineering Technicians, Media and Communication Equipment Workers, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.