Will net demand for graphic designers fall by 50% or more by 2025?

Question

Context

This bet is about the impact of AI art on the graphic design labor market in the US.

Graphic designer labor demand may decrease, and one line of reasoning for why this would occur is as follows:

The introduction of AI art tools is equivalent to adding millions of artists to the labor pool.

Thus, the quantity of art will drastically increase.

Thus, the price for art will decrease, per standard economic models of supply and demand.

Market

If you think that net demand for graphic designers will go down 50% or more in the period from 2022 to 2025, choose YES (as in: yes I think that demand will decrease 50% or more).

If you think that that the net demand for graphic designers will not go down 50% or more in that period, choose NO (as in: no I do not think demand will decrease more than 50%).

So for instance, if you think demand will actually rise, choose NO.

For more details on how "net demand" is defined, and context for the question, read onwards.

Criteria

Net demand is a function of two metrics:

Mean Number of Designers Employed in a Year

The number of graphic designers in the US. This is a mean figure, because the data is released monthly, and so the figure is computed as the mean of the monthly counts in the year. The data source used can be found here:

https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CES6054143001

Mean Graphic Designer Annual Wage

The data source can be found here: https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/OEUN000000054140027102404

The net demand is the number of graphic designers, multiplied by the graphic designer annual wage.

For instance, the starting demand point is a function of:

The mean number of graphic designers employed in 2022 = 59,700

The annual mean wage for graphic designers in 2022 = 67,410 (USD)

And thus the net demand would be computed the following way (and is approximately equivalent to the total amount of money paid to graphic designers in the US in 2022):

59,700 x 67,410 = 4,024,377,000 (USD)

Note that inflation is not factored in, so if inflation adjusted demand falls 90%, but we have yearly inflation of 100%, the market would still resolve to NO. This decision was made because I am lazy.

In summary, if graphic designers in the US are collectively paid less than 2,012,188,500 (USD) in 2025 (in 2025 dollars), according to BLS statistics, this market will resolve to YES. If they are paid more than that, this market resolves to NO.

Notes

The reason the resolution date for this market is set to August of 2026 is due to the delay in the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Updates

March 2024

While new BLS data has not yet been released, I did just read a paper from August 2023 which suggests that in the 5 month period between December 2022, and April 2023, the number of freelancer jobs dropped 2% and earnings dropped 5.2%.

Source: The Short-Term Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Employment: Evidence from an Online Labor Market. Xiang Hui, Oren Reshef, Luofeng Zhou. (cesifo.org)

Discovery Source: Is AI actually useful. Patrick Boyle. (youtube.com)

Interestingly the authors conclude:

In addition, we find that offering high-quality service does not mitigate the negative effect of AI on freelancers, and in fact present suggestive evidence that top employees are disproportionately hurt by AI.

August 2024

The BLS data has been released for 2023, and things are looking good for graphic designers and artists!

The annual wage of graphic designers in 2023 was: $68,110

The mean number of graphic designers in 2023 was: ~60k (basically unchanged)

The result is that from 2022 to 2023, net demand for graphic designers more or less stayed the same - perhaps even increasing slightly.

May 2025

The BLS data has been released for 2024. Things aren't looking as good for graphic designers and artists, but also they're not looking anywhere close to bad enough that if the trend continues, this market will resolve to YES.

The annual wage of graphic designers in 2024 was: $71,230

The mean number of graphic designers in 2024 was: ~54.9k

The result is that from 2023 to 2024, the wage of graphic designers rose (this market isn't factoring in inflation, but I would guess the inflation adjusted wage remained fairly constant), whereas the number of graphic designers fell from 60k (2023) to 54.9k (2024) - a reduction of 8.5%.

It is out of scope for this analysis to attempt to see whether this reduction in employment is attributable to AI impacts on graphic design, or broader economic trends effecting all employment sectors.

Of course, if this specific group saw a massive reduction (eg: > 50%) in demand, but electricians remained stable, that would be a good signal that AI is having an outsized impact on sectors that it is capable of automating.

March 2026

Still waiting on BLS data for the mean wage of graphic designers for 2025, but the mean number employed by month is 51,341. This market will almost certainly...

Manifold Markets · Accepted Answer

No — resolved on May 19, 2026 by Manifold Markets prediction market.