Graphic Designers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Graphic Designers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $47,200. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 214,260 Graphic Designers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.14% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Minnesota, where the location quotient is 1.35, meaning the occupation holds 1.35 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 28,310 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 30.1% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $37,600 or less, and one in ten earns $103,030 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $65,430. The mean ($68,610) versus median ($61,300) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $90,710, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Graphic Designers stands number 155 by employment and number 390 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 7% less than its group median, and it supplies 10.8% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 14 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $61,300, 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 17,140 jobs, 8.0% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $36,420 a year, against $119,250 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $61,300 works out to $5,108 a month before taxes, $2,358 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,179 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,200) to the 75th ($79,000) is worth $31,800 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $67,430 would sit between the median ($61,300) and the 75th percentile ($79,000), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,200, is $14,100 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Lighting Technicians, Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators, Designers, All Other, Artists and Related Workers, All Other, Craft Artists, Choreographers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.