Normally I suck at promotion. Particularly self-promotion, which is obviously a problem for my user experience consultancy. But since this is the last year I will be leading the Usability Professionals’ Association salary survey project (I go off the board after this year), I thought I’d go out with a bit of a pop. I cranked away over the weekend to complete the final draft of the the UPA’s 2009 UX industry salary survey. It’ll be available on Friday. There are some *really* interesting results…but before I drop teaser #1, let me give props where they’re due:
- Ken Becker did a fantastic job on data cleansing, normalizing and initial analysis.
- Karl Steiner also did great work producing the data tables and charts and helping me on subsequent analyses.
- Jeff Sauro did some major statistical heavy lifting and contributed a comprehensive report addendum looking at the relationships between multiple variables.
OK, I lied…just a little more background before the teaser:
- This is the fourth UX industry salary survey by the UPA. After a sputtering start in 2001, the UPA has conducted biennial (I got that right, right? Biennial = every two years?) surveys in 2005, 2007, and this year.
- I took on the project as part of my board of director duties in 2005, and have evolved the format to where it is today. I am also the report writer and main point of contact for the project until the end of this year.
I know, I know…you’re thinking “enough with the hat tips and background, just gimme some data already!” Frankly, I’m enjoying this more than I should, but alright, here ya go:
- The over-time rate of increase in average salary has slowed in 2009, a fact that should surprise absolutely no one. The media is full of stories about companies cutting workers’ salaries by 10%, mandating unpaid vacation, etc. The fact that there was any increase at all in UX salaries was surprising to me.
- When we started looking at the data in detail, the main source of the increase was *quite* interesting… let’s just say that the “gender gap”; i.e., the difference in men’s and women’s salaries for comparable work, appears to be not long for this world. At least in the user experience industry.
Sorry, that’s all you get for now. More later this week! (And the report will be available on Friday.)
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