{"id":3092,"date":"2025-01-19T22:18:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=3092"},"modified":"2025-01-19T22:32:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:32:46","slug":"design-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/design-salaries\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with design salaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a single person living in London, I suffer from the &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/money\/2024\/oct\/05\/the-solo-penalty-from-rent-to-holidays-being-single-is-costing-me-12000-extra-a-year\">single person tax<\/a>&#8216; and I don&#8217;t think we talk about that enough in relation to design salaries. Let&#8217;s assume a junior designer role pays \u00a335K (which incidentally is below the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/skilled-worker-visa\/your-job\">Skilled Worker Visa requirement)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That&#8217;s \u00a32,355.92 after tax.<\/li>\n<li>In Zone 3 where I live, the median 1 bedroom flat will cost you \u00a31700 in rent according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.london.gov.uk\/programmes-strategies\/housing-and-land\/improving-private-rented-sector\/london-rents-map\">London Rents Map.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>To commute into Zone 1 for work will set you back \u00a3192.80 a month<\/li>\n<li>Buying a lunch every day at work will cost you \u00a35-\u00a310 per meal (thank god <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/life-style\/pret-a-manger-prices-sandwiches-coffee-expensive-b2498554.html\">Pret<\/a> lowered their prices again) which means\u00a0 around \u00a3150 a month<\/li>\n<li>A monthly food shop will cost you \u00a3224.15 according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/foodfoundation.org.uk\/news\/food-prices-tracker-january-2025\">Food Foundation<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Which leaves \u00a3128.97 to cover council tax, energy bills, internet, mobile phone bills, and everything else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So this really only works out if you never come into the office, live in a flatshare, are in a relationship where you both work, have wealthy parents who support you, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/01\/magazine\/remote-work-second-jobs-ethics.html\">take a second job<\/a> , or sell pictures of your feet on the internet. I don&#8217;t think that describes a very manageable or equitable situation. Lower salaries make it impossible for someone who is either a carer, raising a child on their own, living alone to take up a career in design later in life. It also leads to less engagement and less patience around promotions and higher industry churn which affects corporate institutional memory.<\/p>\n<p>If I campaigned for MP on a single issue, I&#8217;d love to see the UK&#8217;s design industry stop offering jobs with salaries <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/money-mentor\/income-budgeting\/average-salary-london-uk\">less than the median salary of 30 year olds in London (\u00a346,954)<\/a> and have <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wage_ratio\">wage ratio transparency<\/a> on job sites. We need to offer more people more opportunities to join us in design, not less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a single person living in London, I suffer from the &#8216;single person tax&#8216; and I don&#8217;t think we talk about that enough in relation to design salaries. Let&#8217;s assume a junior designer role pays \u00a335K (which incidentally is below the Skilled Worker Visa requirement). That&#8217;s \u00a32,355.92 after tax. In Zone 3 where I live,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/design-salaries\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The problem with design salaries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-NS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3092"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3092\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}