2019's UX Designer Salary and Contractor Forecast
Cross-functional designers are the new hotness; contractors to be in-demand.
For designers, the good news is that UX design remains one of the most in-demand fields for 2019. However, full-time job openings remain highly skewed towards senior level design positions, with organizations increasingly relying on contractors for more specialized and tactical design roles.
Freelancers and Contractors
In November 2018, The Creative Group and AIGA released survey results from 1,000 participants regarding trends in the creative workplace. Here are some of the highlights for the UX field:
- 37% of creative teams will rely more heavily on freelancers in the next 3 years, due the cost of acquiring and retaining full time talent
- 51% of new freelance hires are expected to be graphic and web design, while only 17% of new freelance hires are expected to be UX researchers and designers
- Freelancers and contractors are expected to have a higher retention rate than those employed in-house, likely due to the highly competitive market, record low unemployment, and cross-company poaching.
In 2019, freelancer and contract UX Designers are expected to have a higher retention rate than those employed in-house.
From the survey, one of the more interesting trends was how the top skill that creative professionals wanted to learn was UX design (24% of respondents). This could indicate a few things:
- UX designers are generally compensated higher than other creative trades within an organization — making the craft appealing
- Design-thinking and user experience are increasingly being prioritized as core business goals — even in more traditional, non-tech companies
- The proliferation of UX resources, boot camps, and industry mentors
Cross-Functional Designers
2019 will also see an increasing emergence of cross-functional UX designers — those who are coming from non-traditional UX design backgrounds like marketing, graphic design, software engineering, QA, and multimedia. One of the biggest trends of 2018 has been the shift from specialized designers to product designers: generalists who can work at any level of design, from research to tactical execution.
This has ushered in the era of the multiskilled designer — designers who serve as product generalists with multiple specialties that can span across disciplines.
This isn’t to say that the era of the specialist is dead. Visual, content, and interaction designers are still in demand — but organizations are looking to fill those specialized roles with contractors rather than full-time employees. In-house, cross-functional designers are increasingly being relied upon to own the design process from start to finish.
If you’re looking to land a full-time gig or advance your design career, then consider learning some of these cross-functional skills:
- Design prototyping
- Marketing and branding
- Product management
- User research
- Data analysis / statistics
- Frontend development (frameworks like React, Vue, Angular, but more specifically JavaScript)
- Systems thinking (design systems, organizational systems)
Compensation
According to Indeed as of Dec 2018, the average salary for a User Experience Designer / Product Designer in the United States was $92,753 per year.
Robert Half expects the 2019 UX Designer mid-point salary to be $93,000 with senior positions at $115,000.
Coveted Silicon Valley and NYC positions could see rates at 1.25x and 1.5x the national average as companies battle for top talent.
While these numbers vary wildly from state to state and company to company, what is important to note is that base pay on average has seemed to flatten year over year. This is consistent with some of the broader salary increase projections for 2019 — which forecast a national salary increase of only 1–4% year over year. According to SHRM, in 2019, U.S. salary budgets are expected to increase by 3.2% — a 0.1% increase over 2018’s growth (3.1%). High performers can expect to see the largest increase of 4.1%.
TLDR
All in all, UX design is still projected to be one of the hottest fields in 2019 — but the field itself is shifting more towards cross-functional product designers for in-house positions and contract designers for more specialized, tactical roles.
Top design talent can expect multiples of 1.25 to 1.5x the national average in highly competitive markets like the Bay Area and New York — while overall base compensation looks to increase marginally year over year.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article :). I frequently write on a myriad of design and tech topics, so feel free to follow for more.
Happy designing!
-Justin
