A Few Notes about the 2007 AIGA Salary Survey

Every year the AIGA and Aquent put out a salary survey. I participated in the questionnaire this year, I assume I was one of the surveys that was counted. The survey itself has some issues with it's methodology. The whole thing is based on only 4785 people. Of those, only 149 worked at web-focused companies, 25% were from companies of 4 or less people, and 23% of them were from the west coast. So the survey is heavily tilted towards small companies in a few areas, and not really useful at all for measuring "real" web design jobs.

The very nature of the opt-in survey introduces a bias into the results. My guess is that the bias is towards high salaries (people that want to "brag" about their success) and low salaries (designers upset about where they are), under-representing typical designers. It also probably doesn't count many out of work designers or very low-end designers.

Since Aquent is a partner, and Aquent is a placement/staffing agency, I would think their data on salaries would be much better. They could dispense with the survey entirely and just report on their numbers when placing designers.

Despite the flaws, there were a few interesting tidbits in the report.

• Portland, LA, San Diego, Minneapolis, Austin and New York are the best cities to be a solo designer
• Of these, it is cheapest to live in Austin, then Portland. New York is the most expensive
• Portland and Minneapolis are not particularly good for Creative Directors. Milwaukee (huh?), New York and San Francisco are best for CDs
• In general designers get paid the most in California and New York. No surprise there
• Entry level designers get paid about the same everywhere. Get your first job in the Midwest, then move to the coast after a few years
• Web Designers at ad agencies get paid a lot, especially on the East Coast