Graphic Designers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays graphic designers the most, $87,920. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Rhode Island wins, at $60,490. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For graphic designers, the District of Columbia leads both nominally at $87,920 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Rhode Island first at $60,490. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,960
People doing it
197,830
Highest paid
$87,920
DC
Best off, really
$60,490
RI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$39,520
Highest tenth
$104,910
Lowest, really
$37,369
WV
States with data
51
National average
$70,560
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.41%
RI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $37,369 to $60,490.
- 197,830 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $62,960. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $62,960. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in graphic designers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $37,369 to $60,490 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- National employment in graphic designers is 197,830 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for graphic designers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Graphic Designers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $39,520 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,960 |
| Top tenth earn over | $104,910 |
| This salary | $62,960 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Graphic Designers
The national median for this job
$62,960around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $39,520 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,960 |
| Top tenth | $104,910 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Graphic Designers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $40,350 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $87,920 |
| Spread | $47,570 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $60,150 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,899 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| RI | $78,220 | $61,345 | $60,490 |
| DC | $87,920 | $66,177 | $59,724 |
| MD | $75,120 | $58,472 | $56,242 |
| VA | $72,310 | $56,303 | $55,884 |
| NY | $77,340 | $59,659 | $55,432 |
| WA | $72,710 | $59,981 | $55,251 |
| MA | $76,710 | $59,280 | $54,768 |
| CT | $72,700 | $56,726 | $54,708 |
| VT | $65,690 | $52,737 | $54,573 |
| NV | $62,890 | $52,712 | $54,354 |
| OH | $60,080 | $49,518 | $53,935 |
| ND | $56,470 | $47,554 | $53,689 |
| NJ | $73,790 | $58,212 | $53,463 |
| CO | $66,330 | $53,266 | $52,540 |
| CA | $75,130 | $58,746 | $52,181 |
| TN | $57,270 | $48,196 | $52,096 |
| UT | $62,310 | $49,473 | $52,076 |
| TX | $60,150 | $50,511 | $51,979 |
| WI | $59,900 | $48,208 | $51,783 |
| AK | $62,570 | $52,455 | $51,571 |
| MN | $63,860 | $50,672 | $51,487 |
| NM | $56,730 | $46,262 | $51,183 |
| MT | $56,890 | $45,974 | $50,944 |
| NE | $56,700 | $45,862 | $50,746 |
| PA | $60,730 | $49,112 | $50,371 |
| NC | $58,450 | $47,321 | $50,267 |
| MO | $56,750 | $46,049 | $50,183 |
| IL | $62,560 | $49,495 | $50,068 |
| SC | $57,170 | $46,641 | $50,057 |
| FL | $61,660 | $51,724 | $49,998 |
| GA | $60,250 | $48,183 | $49,828 |
| OK | $53,630 | $43,359 | $49,112 |
| ME | $60,030 | $47,682 | $49,108 |
| IN | $55,480 | $45,151 | $48,979 |
| MI | $57,350 | $46,074 | $48,919 |
| NH | $60,490 | $50,784 | $48,207 |
| DE | $60,130 | $47,724 | $48,083 |
| OR | $66,040 | $50,015 | $47,760 |
| AZ | $58,510 | $48,133 | $47,606 |
| KY | $52,960 | $42,997 | $47,528 |
| KS | $53,630 | $42,568 | $47,316 |
| SD | $48,390 | $41,061 | $46,610 |
| LA | $49,910 | $41,172 | $46,603 |
| IA | $50,310 | $41,304 | $46,531 |
| AL | $51,070 | $41,024 | $45,597 |
| ID | $50,350 | $40,821 | $44,650 |
| AR | $46,220 | $38,066 | $44,003 |
| MS | $45,640 | $37,118 | $42,522 |
| WY | $45,150 | $38,458 | $42,332 |
| HI | $58,070 | $45,869 | $42,233 |
| WV | $40,350 | $33,547 | $37,369 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of graphic designers earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $62,960.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for graphic designers, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $66,177.
- Levelling out prices for graphic designers is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $37,369.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for graphic designers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $62,960, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for graphic designers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $66,177, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to graphic designers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is West Virginia at $37,369. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $37,369 — and the two source series are dated independently.