New York and L.A. aren't the only epicenters for graphic designers, architects, and fashion designers.

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From the enduring consumer electronics influence of Apple all the way to the rise of small-scale 3D printing businesses, design skills now sit at the core of new and old U.S. industries alike. 

Design is also a key piece of the creative economy, providing a way for artistically inclined workers to make a living. Some design fields like architecture require an advanced degree, while others can be entered through apprenticeships or other less traditional schooling paths. 

But where are the key clusters and geographic centers of design in America? Which are its leading design cities?

To get at this, I worked with occupational data provided to me by the labor market data and research firm EMSI to study the design sector nationally and identify its major geographic clusters and locations. Our analysis focused on the key occupations that make up the design sector: architects and landscape architects; commercial and industrial designers, graphic designers, fashion designers, interior designers, set and exhibit designers, and others. We looked at both designers employed in established companies and freelancers who are self-employed.

Let’s start with some key facts on the scope and extent of the design industry nationally.

• Overall, roughly 625,000 Americans were employed in design occupations in 2013. This marks a slight decline—of about 15,000—since 2009, the trough of the recession and the baseline year in EMSI’s analysis.
• Of these, about 70 percent are employed by firms and other businesses, while 175,000 are self-employed. The number of self-employed designers has contracted 6 percent since 2009. The number of traditionally employed design workers has also fallen by about 1 percent.
• Employed designers earn a median hourly wage of $24.55, well above EMSI’s threshold for high-wage jobs, while self-employed designers earn a slightly lower median hourly wage of $18.79, putting these in the ranks of mid-wage jobs.
• Graphic design is the biggest sector of all design workers by far. There were nearly 200,000 traditionally employed graphic designers and almost another 75,000 self-employed graphic designers in 2013.
• Architecture is the second-largest sector, with 85,000 working in firms and another 23,000 self-employed. There were another 21,000 landscape designers, about a quarter of whom were self-employed.
• Interior design, which can require fewer years of training and formal education before professional licensing, is an occupational group that is, interestingly, about evenly split between self-employed and traditionally employed workers—about 40,000 of each in 2013....Continue Reading

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