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Statistics

The Size of the Design Occupations

The size of the design professions has grown rapidly for the last three decades.

Awareness of design as a factor in industry competitiveness, the gains made by industry and government promotion of design, the changing nature of tertiary education, changes in attitude to and availability of employment, computerisation and media exposure have all fuelled this growth.

The growth in numbers of designers

The figures in this chart are tabulated from the Census question on occupation – that is the number of people indicating that their job title is, say, interior designer or industrial designer. It is not a measure of all those who have trained in interior design or industrial design but now work under other job titles.

NOTE: These figures are from various Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publications. Before using them for any purpose you should confirm their accuracy with original ABS data. Note that different occupation classification systems have applied across the various years included. Figures are shown aligned in the table to illustrate relative rate of growth. Correct interpretation requires reconciling the different sub-occupations included in the figures surveyed under differing classification systems. In general 1976 and 1981 are using the same classifications, 1986 and 1991 are using ASCO 1, and 1996 and 2001 are using ASCO 2. 2006 and 2011use ANZSCO 2006.

Design Sector Statistics PN033 (available as direct download by DIA members, or contact the DIA National Office)

The growth in design related businesses

The figures in the following two charts are counts of businesses advertising in the Yellow Pages from 1996 and 2005. The 1996 figures are counts from the printed directories for the capital cities. The 2005 figures are counts for the whole of each state from the on-line directory.

The figures give some indication of the scale of activity in each discipline area however not all businesses advertising under a particular directory title will be providing design services as defined by the DIA and some businesses may be advertising in more than one classification. In addition the titles used for certain business areas in the Yellow pages change or are subdivided from time to time.