HFI Usability Salary Survey

September 26, 2003

Thank you for participating in HFI's Salary Survey of usability practitioners. We are happy to inform you of the following results.

Notes:
1. Percentages refer to number of respondents in each category.
2. Dollar amounts refer to the mean of annual salary plus bonus for each category.
3. Dollar amounts are rounded off to the nearest $100.

Total respondents:	251

From U.S.:	194
From other countries:	57

Note: We were not able to draw any conclusions internationally due to small sample sizes for each country and diverse positions and currencies. (Other countries included UK, Switzerland, Sweden, S. Africa, Portugal, New Zealand, Netherlands, Ireland, India, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and Vanuatu.)

US respondents:

Commercial:	179	$82,600
Government & Nonprofit:	23	$59,700

With the US respondents working in the commercial sector of the economy, three factors appear to influence compensation:
1. experience in the field
2. advanced degrees
3. primary activity

1. Analysis by years of commercial experience:

One to four years	21%	$65,200
Five to ten years	47%	$82,700
Over ten years	32%	$94,300

Number of years of experience in the "over 10 years" category (i.e., 10, 15, 20, or 25 years) did not appear to additionally effect compensation.

2. Analysis by college degree:

BA	51%	$78,000
MA	35%	$80,500
PhD	14%	$104,000

3. Analysis by primary activity:

Usability testing	17%	$71,300
User interface design	46%	$80,600

Other primary activity groups were too small to encourage conclusions. They included:

User analysis	6%
Research	2%
Graphic design	2%
Other	24%

Additional observations:

1. Job title does not appear to correlate with compensation, with the exception of the "Manager" title.
The 30 respondents with "Manager" in their title had a mean salary plus bonus of $124,300. This is 50 percent higher than the national average.

2. As you might expect, practitioners in California, New York City area, and Massachusetts appear to be more highly compensated.

Massachusetts	8 respondents	$94,400
California	26 respondents	$107,300
New York City area	11 respondents	$108,900

Sample sizes for states were too small to be useful, and other sources suggest that urban vs. rural in the same state is an important distinction, next time we will ask for geographical data differently.