---
title: "Graphic Designer"
description: "Design or create graphics to meet specific commercial or promotional needs, such as packaging, displays, or logos. May use a variety of mediums to…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/graphic-designer"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Graphic Designer

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-1024 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-1024.00

Design or create graphics to meet specific commercial or promotional needs, such as packaging, displays, or logos. May use a variety of mediums to achieve artistic or decorative effects.

Also advertised as: Artist; Brand Designer; Designer; Graphic Artist; Graphic Design Coordinator; Graphic Designer; Online Producer; Production Artist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $62,960 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $30.27/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $39,520 to $104,910, with the middle half between $49,040 and $81,830
- **Total US employment:** 197,830
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.1% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 20,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 30/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 197,830 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $39,520 |
| 25th | $49,040 |
| 50th (median) | $62,960 |
| 75th | $81,830 |
| 90th | $104,910 |
| Mean (average) | $70,560 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $87,920 | $79,999 | 1,150 |
| RI | $78,220 | $76,476 | 750 |
| NY | $77,340 | $71,664 | 14,530 |
| MA | $76,710 | $72,534 | 4,450 |
| CA | $75,130 | $67,856 | 27,390 |
| MD | $75,120 | $71,571 | 3,050 |
| NJ | $73,790 | $67,819 | 5,670 |
| WA | $72,710 | $67,945 | 3,960 |
| CT | $72,700 | $70,167 | 1,930 |
| VA | $72,310 | $71,520 | 4,740 |
| CO | $66,330 | $64,366 | 4,200 |
| OR | $66,040 | $63,893 | 4,140 |
| VT | $65,690 | $67,059 | 410 |
| MN | $63,860 | $64,753 | 5,570 |
| NV | $62,890 | $62,903 | 1,570 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/graphic-designer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/graphic-designer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 265,900 in the 2024–2034 base year to 271,500 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,700 jobs, or +2.1%. About as fast as average: 2.1% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 20,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 65.0% |
| High School Diploma | 15.0% |
| Master's Degree | 10.0% |
| Some College Courses | 5.0% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 5.0% |

## What the work involves

- Key information into computer equipment to create layouts for client or supervisor.
- Review final layouts and suggest improvements, as needed.
- Determine size and arrangement of illustrative material and copy, and select style and size of type.
- Develop graphics and layouts for product illustrations, company logos, and Web sites.
- Create designs, concepts, and sample layouts, based on knowledge of layout principles and esthetic design concepts.
- Use computer software to generate new images.
- Prepare digital files for printing.
- Confer with clients to discuss and determine layout design.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Design — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fine Arts — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Originality — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Artistic (A), Conventional (C), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 3.92 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.43 |
| R — Realistic | 3.38 |
| I — Investigative | 2.86 |
| S — Social | 2.16 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INFP | 70.8 |
| INTP | 67.8 |
| INFJ | 66.8 |
| ENTP | 63.1 |
| INTJ | 62.0 |

Best-fitting types: INFP, INTP, INFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Special Effects Artist and Animator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-effects-artist-and-animator) — median $102,030
- [Art Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-director) — median $114,850
- [Web Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/web-designer) — median $104,000
- [Fine Artist, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fine-artist) — median $55,490
- [Desktop Publisher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/desktop-publisher) — median $55,290
- [Video Game Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/video-game-designer) — median $104,000
- [Set and Exhibit Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/set-and-exhibit-designer) — median $75,240
- [Commercial and Industrial Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-and-industrial-designer) — median $83,910
- [Interior Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/interior-designer) — median $67,190
- [Software Developer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer) — median $135,980

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/graphic-designer