The State of Service Design

One readable update on the profession, built from the salary report's survey data. No filters, no PDF. Just the patterns that matter for Service Design professionals.

Where we are

The wave heard from Service Design professionals across countries, and the headline is the one the profession asks about first: the global median salary stands at , up % from one wave earlier.

Zoom out and the arc matters more than any single wave. Since the first wave the median has moved from to , a % climb, with straight gains since the low of in the wave. Two honest notes before the charts: every salary figure on this page is normalized to USD, and this wave's sample is the smallest we have fielded. Both get their full treatment at the end.

  • Global median salary in the wave, up % wave over wave.
  • straight gains since the -wave low of .
  • % above the first wave's median of .
  • professionals answered, across countries.

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Five-year arcs

Across the waves we have fielded since , where Service Design professionals work has shifted beneath them: the remote share has eased from % to %, a slide of pp. Satisfaction has drifted from to out of 10 and has sat there for straight waves, while weekly hours have not moved: hours in every wave we have run.

The pay ladder tells a sharper story. This wave it runs from a junior median up to at level, the top rung with enough responses to report (n = ). The base of that ladder is narrowing: the junior cohort has thinned from respondents in the first wave to now. Fewer entry-level professionals are reaching the survey, and that makes the intake numbers worth watching in the waves ahead.

  • Remote work down pp across waves: % → %.
  • Satisfaction eased from to out of 10, unchanged for straight waves.
  • Weekly hours: in every wave, no drift.
  • The ladder runs from (junior) to (, n = ).
  • Junior respondents down from to across the run.

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What shifted this year

The career questions have run for waves, so this section compares the and waves directly. The short version: a steady year. Promotions held at % (), layoffs ticked up to % (), and % switched jobs ().

Mobility is the number that frames the rest: % of respondents plan to switch jobs and another % are considering it, so % of the profession is at least open to a move. Through all of it, career confidence held at out of 10, exactly where it stood the wave before. Two waves of history cannot say much more than that, and we will not pretend they can.

  • Promotions % (), essentially unchanged.
  • Layoffs % (), still below one in ten.
  • Job switches % (), the largest move of the year.
  • % plan to switch jobs or are considering it.
  • Career confidence steady at /10, wave over wave.

Explore this filtered view: promotions & layoffs → · switching jobs → · future confidence →

What drives outcomes (PPS)

First, the method in one plain sentence: a predictive power score (PPS) measures how well one survey answer predicts another, on a scale from 0 to

  1. Scores are asymmetric and correlational, so a delta reports a change in predictive power and never a cause. The full walk-through lives on the methodology page.

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  • Scores are asymmetric and correlational: deltas are not causes. See the methodology.

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Looking ahead

Read this edition against its own footprint. Response volumes peaked at and have thinned since, down to this wave ( across the last three). Single-wave moves deserve extra caution on that base, especially inside the smaller subgroups.

The junior cohort is the first thing we will watch: junior respondents this wave against in the first, a thinning intake pipe under stable senior ranks. The career questions, now waves old, are how we will see whether Service Design professionals are moving past that squeeze.

  • Sample sizes have thinned across recent waves: across the last three.
  • All salary figures are USD-normalized; the arc crosses a currency-handling pivot around the wave.
  • PPS scores are asymmetric and correlational; deltas describe changes in predictive power.
  • Subgroups below n = respondents are suppressed from every aggregate.

Salaries are self-reported and normalized to USD; trends that cross the currency pivot rely on normalization rather than raw local-currency figures. Predictive power scores come from the report's PPS matrices, compared as and joined on shared predictor and target pairs. Subgroups under n = are suppressed, and every median carries its denominator. The full detail lives on the methodology page.

Benchmark your own salary against this wave →