The Six New Realities of Creative Work in 2009

An analysis of Coroflot's 2009 Designer Salary Survey Results.

Overview
The 2009 edition of the Coroflot Salary Survey saw a significant jump in the number of respondents: over 5000 this time, with significant showings by all eight of the fields surveyed. Even the relatively recent additions to Coroflot -- architecture, web and fashion design -- turned out several hundred respondents each, while the site's historical mainstay of Industrial Design comprised less than 40% of the total. Taken together these indicate a sea change in the nature of Coroflot's community, from a niche group of product designers to a pan-disciplinary collection of creatives; fitting, considering the diversifying roles designers find themselves filling.

Findings are, of course, heavily influenced by the global economy, and the first glaring trend is a reduction in average salaries, nearly across the board. Certain bright spots do shine, if you look deeper: real salaries in newly dynamic design centers like China and South Africa grew significantly, and North America got some relief from lower living costs, meaning that real salaries stayed level or grew slightly. What's going away are soaring paychecks in the "magic" fields of Interaction Design and Design Management: on a runaway course since 2006, salaries in these fields are now returning to earth. Whether this indicates an economic debacle, a natural and inevitable correction, or a falling out between the business world and "design thinking" depends strongly on your point of view.

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1. Remember, creative work is its own reward.
Design Management and Interaction Design: welcome back to the real world.

As these fields mature and lose some of their sheen of newness and exclusivity (though neither is a young discipline), the precipitously climbing compensation drops for the first time since 2006. They're still the best-paid fields by far though.

At the other end, the tight cluster of averages for Web, Graphic, Interior, ID, and Architectures stays tight, and drops a touch, though none below US$40,000. Fashion & Apparel is the noteworthy one here, bouncing up a full $3,000 despite a spread of education levels and seniority similar to 2008. We have no idea why.

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2. Book learning only gets you so far.
Experience continues to be a far better predictor of income than education level, although holding a degree of some sort is a definite advantage in most fields.

The two exceptions to this second rule are Fashion and Interiors, which also hold the distinction of paying the least of all the disciplines surveyed. PhD holders did well in a few fields, though given their vanishingly small showing in the survey -- less than 0.6% overall -- it'd be wise to not read too much into this.

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3. Remember, teaching is its own reward
When it comes to working environment and salary, the only consistent conclusion is to stay out of academia -- it took last or next to last place in 6 of the 8 fields surveyed. Consultants tend to make as much or more than their corporate counterparts in most fields, perhaps compensating for their more volatile employment situations. Interaction Designers continue to fare best when going it alone, unlike most other designers, though this advantage has diminished somewhat versus previous years.

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4. In-house, out of a job
The big story for creative work environments in 2009: corporate design studios have shed staff in a big way. Where Web Design was the only field with less than 60% of respondents in-house last year, 2009 finds that to be true of every discipline except Fashion and Design Management.

The ranks of freelancers and consultancies have both swelled in response, perhaps taking advantage of the unprecedented availability of experienced professionals after recent lay-offs. This is consistent with panelist comments during this year's Confab series: consultants find themselves with more design work than ever, from corporations who've lost the capacity to pursue it themselves.

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5. The grass is greener down south
The top 30 countries, by response volume, continue a story that's been told for several years now: the highest paid creative professionals are those in the US, Europe and Australasia, but cost of living often negates this effect. Swiss designers, for example, enjoy spectacular rates of pay (US$73,000 per year on average), but pay dearly for the privilege.

Salaries adjusted by the Economist-collected "Big Mac Index" put Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand in the top 5, as before, but they're joined this year by two much more affordable countries: South Africa, which climbed from 6th to 4th place, and China,whose respondents leapt from a BMI-adjusted US$50,000/year in 2008 to almost US$74,000 this year, putting them solidly in the number 2 position. As compensation goes, there seems to be something to the "Created In China" movement we're hearing so much about.

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6. At least your pens and markers are getting cheaper
The most remarkable trend here has nothing to do with design, but with cost of living, which went down in every surveyed region of the US and Canada from 2008 to 2009. This fact helps soften the blow of dropping salaries in many regions -- the Pacific Northwest and Midwestern US most notably -- and bucks up the stagnant pay seen most everywhere else.

Canadians took a step upward, but the best-compensated designers still live in California and the Mid-Atlantic states. Given the high concentration of consultancies in those regions, this could be another indicator that the brunt of the downturn was felt by corporate designers.

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Additional Information
The Corculator is back! As in years past, the Salary Survey also features a full database search tool that gives you a customized table of salary comparisons based on field of specialty and job title, and broken down by location and education level. Use it in good health.

A note about survey methodology
Of 5,214 responses this year, 141 were discarded due to statistical anomalies; no US$10,000,000 earners in the sample. Similarly, obvious mis-entries -- salaries of "1" and the like -- were also purged. These adjustments are reflected in both the analysis charts and the searchable statistical tables.

Limitations on filtered statistics: As you apply filters, it's worth keeping an eye on how many responses you're left with. Certain combinations are quite rare -- only 3 interior designers responding to the survey worked in academic settings, for example -- reducing the reliability of the resulting averages. The analysis charts exclude certain data points for this reason.

Consumer Price Index adjustments: US and Canadian salaries are charted by region for 2008 and 2009, with a third column showing 2009 salaries adjusted for inflation. These adjustments are based on CPI (Consumer Price Index) numbers for each region, dividing the values for July 2008 by July 2009's, and multiplying the resulting number by the unadjusted 2009 average salaries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the index went down in this period in all regions, for the first time in the Survey's history, giving adjusted incomes higher than their unadjusted counterparts. CPI numbers are taken from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Statistics Canada websites.

For international salaries, the popular "Big Mac Index" from Economist.com (login required) was used to adjust for purchasing power, taking into account the relative cost of goods and services in each country, as expressed by the globally consistent double-decker sandwich. Adjusted and unadjusted average salaries are shown side-by-side, so that purchasing power's influence can be seen. As far as we can tell, they don't have Big Macs in India, so a more general PPP value was used from the latest University of Pennsylvania report on the subject.

For further information please contact alviani - a t - coroflot - d o t - com.