2016 Design Salary Survey

Individual Background Demographics

THE FIRST THING TO DO WITH SURVEY DATA is to get to know the sample. Most respondents (79%) work in the US with most of the rest working in Europe (11%) and Canada (5%). Half of the US respondents came from California and the Northeast (by way of comparison, these two regions make up about a quarter of the US population). We note two possible causes for bias towards California and the Northeast: people living in those regions disproportionately respond to O’Reilly surveys and those regions may have more design jobs. The discrepancy between the median salaries of US ($99K) and European respondents ($48K) is greater than what would be expected given national per capita income, but this is partially explained by more US respondents holding higher positions—a quirk of the sample. The US region with the highest salary was California (with median salary of $128K), followed by the Mid-Atlantic ($118K).

Two-thirds of the respondents were male, and a significant gap in median pay between male and female respondents was present ($99K and $85K, respectively). About half of the $14K difference in the sample is attributable to the fact that a larger share of the sample’s men held higher positions. Still, the –$6K coefficient for female in the linear model indicates that even when every other variable is held constant (same work, same skills) women earn about $6K less than men. This is roughly the same gender gap that we saw for data scientists in a different ...