AIGA Aquent Annual Salary Survey Published

It's time to snoop into the financial status of your cubicle mate. For the sixth year, Aquent and the AIGA, along with Communication Arts magazine, have teamed to offer the AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries. This year marks the second consecutive year the report is available as a free, online, interactive database.

Based on a return of more than 3,600 respondents from eight geographic regions containing 15 major metropolitan markets, this year’s results indicate an improvement in salary gains for the first time in several years. This annual survey, according to the press release, is "considered a benchmark and valuable compensation gage across the industry and provides a current and specific reflection of what a significant share of those in the design profession are currently earning." Couldn't they have simply said, "the survey tells you what everyone else is making"?

Apparently, everyone's overloading it trying to find out what their boss makes. It refused to tell us what an art director in Boston working at an agency makes.