Graphic Designers

Moderate Risk
59%

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AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
47%
(Moderate Risk)
POLLING
71%
(High Risk, Based on 4,280 votes)
Average: 59%
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
2.5%
by year 2033
WAGES
$58,910
or $28.32 per hour
Volume
212,720
as of 2023
SUMMARY
What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
4.1/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

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Calculated automation risk

47% (Moderate Risk)

Moderate Risk (41-60%): Occupations with a moderate risk of automation usually involve routine tasks but still require some human judgment and interaction.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Some very important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Fine Arts

  • Originality

Some quite important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Social Perceptiveness

  • Persuasion

  • Negotiation

User poll

71% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted that it's probable this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 47% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Graphic Designers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

The following graph is shown where there are enough votes to produce meaningful data. It displays user poll results over time, providing a clear indication of sentiment trends.

Sentiment over time (quarterly)

Sentiment over time (yearly)

Growth

Slow growth relative to other professions.

The number of 'Graphic Designers' job openings is expected to rise 2.5% by 2033

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Wages

Moderately paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Graphic Designers' was $58,910, or $28 per hour

'Graphic Designers' were paid 22.6% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $48,060

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Greater range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2023 there were 212,720 people employed as 'Graphic Designers' within the United States.

This represents around 0.14% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 713 people are employed as 'Graphic Designers'.

Job 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 achieve artistic or decorative effects.

SOC Code: 27-1024.00

Comments (165)

Leave a comment
h
06 Jul 2024 14:25
Just no. AI art looks and will always look awful and soulless. People who say "ohhh its ai it'll look better in the future" just dont know how AI works. AI isnt gonna replace ANY creative processes, EVER.
Jim
26 Feb 2025 23:03
This will have aged terribly 10 years from now.
Jake (Uncertain)
08 Jul 2024 16:28
AI, at its current stages, can only replicate patterns it sees in the images and text it’s given. It isn’t capable of the knowledge behind the design choices in Graphic Design. AI doesn’t understand anatomy, color theory, or other aspects of art. However, this doesn’t mean that it can’t in the future, and it certainly doesn’t mean it can’t fool us into thinking it knows what it’s doing.
EES (Moderate)
11 May 2025 14:20
it's already seeing tides where ai has already replaced a lot, but no job will be replaced completely within 2 decades. its impractical to leave the job to ai completely, but layoffs and fewer manpower are definitely the way to go
79_sketches (Uncertain)
18 Dec 2024 21:40
A couple of years ago this was less than 5%. It is scary to see this advance in just 2 years
Azazel (Low)
04 Jul 2024 10:24
Looking that artist fight back against artificial intelligence by making Anti-AI Flitters that seems to lower the risk not to mention what you put as a reason for 34% risk which is that It's hard to automate Originality, fine arts.etc not to mention that every single artist have their own style even in the umbrella terms, for example you can't say style in Toilet Bound Hanako kun is the same as one in Blue Exorcist.etc.
In short: Even if hard it in theory could be possible, but I'm more for making that AI + Artist combo to help people with drawing.
Gabe
07 May 2025 14:48
Hey my fellow designers, i know we all can recognize a good work from a mediocre to bad one, we are trained on our field after all, however there are tons of clients who will see some ai generated slop and feel like it's good enough (specially for logos or illustration).

So yeah, i don't think corporate will slow down on their demand for professionals but freelance will take a huge tool (i think), i myself am trying to expand it as of late, art comissions were never stable but i loved to them (nowadays the chance of getting a client is probably close to 0 since a lot of basic stuff is covered for the average client without high standarts) so i opt out to learn how to tattoo, so maybe if it ever comes to lose my job because of some morons from the tech industry i might have something else to go by.
Anonymous (Low)
25 Apr 2025 17:50
because graphic design requires good creativity, something robots dont have
Agt (Low)
21 Mar 2024 02:09
Clients will get designs from automated AI, but they will start to look all very similar, lacking personality. A good graphic designer can listen to their clients and deliver what they ask, get feedback and adjust accordingly
nyah (Low)
06 Jul 2024 03:50
motion graphics is too perfect to replicate
d (No chance)
23 Aug 2023 08:39
Most commentary here is from people who are either very young or very removed from the actual profession of graphic design or most art that is used professionally. It is not, at all, a field that is about "generating" art or designs. It is about exactness, specificity, and unintuitive associations. Exactness from customers, developers, clients, coworkers, bosses, etc.

The problem that people don't seem to understand is that all the generative ai programs right now produce art that's very cool to look at and art that no one would ever pay for, because they don't understand the point of paying for art in the first place.

There are billions of cool images you get get for free online right now. Graphic designers already compete against that, and yet, they're still paid.

Why?

The reason why artists are paid is because people want something very specific, and all generative AI right now, and in the future, will fail the specificity requirement because it by nature has to give probabilistic (aka common) answers, and as people adapt to AI art existing, the demands on specificity will increase.
Electri (Low)
26 Nov 2025 22:55
Because they dont capture the same depth of emotion and they also dont look natural as they make movements too smooth
Steve (Low)
05 Feb 2025 17:47
High barrier of entry, high returns and low maintenance career after about 15,000 hours.
skibidi (Moderate)
06 Jul 2024 05:55
AI keeps getting better with graphic design in general. Just look at things like Sora by OpenAI or the Microsoft Bing Image Creator, and then think about what that'll look like in a couple of years.
josh (Highly likely)
19 May 2024 21:19
its easy to train ai on boring corporate designs
Rene Yibowei (Low)
12 Nov 2025 10:07
Design is quite a broad field and while it is not exactly fine arts it would be harder to get into and you would need to be better at your game.
Tvrbo (Moderate)
23 May 2024 04:42
It is more likely that designers will use artificial intelligence as a tool, as there are things that artificial intelligence will not be able to do, such as creating a completely original and coherent branding system.
Sponge Bob Squarepants (Uncertain)
11 Apr 2024 16:31
20 years is a long time. Would you have expected this AI boom twenty years ago? Who knows how fast AI will develop in the future. Imagine showing someone SORA twenty years ago. They would be in disbelief.

Graphic design is too broad of a term in my opinion. There's logo design, web design, package design, wayfinding design, branding, mobile design, t-shirt design, print design, poster design, and much more.

Digital art and illustrations I think are already under threat. When the art being generated is general and the boundaries of art are more forgiving, then the general nature of AI will thrive. But for more exacting work like logo design, web design, and package design, AI struggles from my experience.

I have played around with Adobe's built-in AI tools for Illustrator and Photoshop. While they're cool to play with, I often find myself wasting time playing prompt engineering, when I could have created something on my own faster. If I as a designer don't have patience to prompt-engineer my way into a design, I'm certain clients won't either.

There's also levels to graphic design. Maybe AI will get rid of the bad designers and the bad clients! But the precise, custom, unique work that many clients look for is hard to replace.

Lastly, being a graphic designer is more than just the technical skills. It's about directing a vision for the design. Even if AI is 100% perfect, it may not understand the client's needs.


Samuel (Highly likely)
20 Nov 2023 16:49
AIs like Adobe Firefly are improving at being precise on which image you wish to create.
dhaarini (Highly likely)
10 Sep 2023 06:41
there are websites like ideogram.ai that can generate logs with whatever text we want to add, by just prompting. certainly the demand of engineers will become low in the coming years
Lucille (Low)
24 Aug 2023 01:00
As mentioned, one main part of it requires originality, human touch and knowledge and great examination and execution of details, plus having one graphic designer with great coverage in many forms of media can be better than 10 ais together

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