Let's talk shop

The ongoing joke with our book club was that nearly half of the members are designers or design students. Our group was sort of randomly assembled through the friend of friend method so we thought it was funny that our dynamics aligned in that there is a similar interest for such a creative career.

image via shelter

Now I have some stats that explain that coincidence because the other day I stumbled upon the website for The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (yes, sometimes I randomly peruse government websites, a girl has to stay informed). The site provides information on what the workforce in your state looks like, it has everything from Occupation Titles that are segmented by industry, to average hourly wages, annual mean salaries and the number of individuals employed in each field.

The section on Interior Design presented lots of great facts and statistics about the industry. The most surprising fact to me was that Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, and Georgia have the highest number of interior decorators and designers per capita. California and New York are not on the list, does that seem weird to anyone else? It seems every other featured home/company/designer in magazines, websites, and television is from one of these states.

Apparently there are about 72,000 interior designers in the United States and about 1,200 of those are in Colorado. The majority of those are focused in specialized design, next up are those that fall into the architectural/landscape services category and then lastly is a small but significant group who specialize in furniture/home furnishing stores.

If you want to learn more definitely check out the site, the numbers are about a year old (from 2009) but if you are contemplating a career change this is a great resource to get the basic information that people might not tell you in an interview or inquiry.