Contents
- Illustrator employment statistics: Main work activity and career stage
- Illustrator employment statistics: Weekly illustration hours
- Illustrator employment statistics: Illustration earnings
- Illustrator employment statistics: Income stability
- Illustrator employment statistics: Finding clients and time spent seeking work
- Sources
Illustrator employment statistics: Main work activity and career stage
Illustration is the sole main work activity for some respondents, while others combine it with another job. In a survey of professionals residing and/or working in Catalonia, conducted in November and December 2023, 31.6% of the 174 analyzed respondents reported working only in illustration. The report also says that 8.6% were beginning their illustration profession. These figures describe the survey sample, not all illustrators in Catalonia or elsewhere. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 28)
The report’s breakdowns show how work activity differed across respondent groups. Among respondents with illustration studies, 33.3% worked only in illustration; among those with related studies, such as graphic design or fine arts, the figure was 34.7%. These are separate education groups in the report’s cross-tabulation. The figures do not establish that education caused a particular work arrangement.
The survey also reports work-activity shares by gender: 33.3% of men and 17.6% of women were in the category combining illustration with another job. Separately, women made up 62% of the respondents working only in illustration. That last figure describes the gender composition of the sole-illustration subgroup; it is not the share of all women respondents who worked exclusively as illustrators. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 28)
Illustrator employment statistics: Weekly illustration hours
Among respondents who answered APIC’s question about weekly illustration hours—88% of the sample—the average was 26 hours per week. The report gives a range of 79 hours among those respondents. This is time spent on professional illustration, rather than a measure of total paid work across every job. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 30)
The distribution shows why an average alone does not describe everyone’s schedule. In the survey, 39.1% worked between 21 and 40 hours per week in illustration, while 10.5% reported more than 40 hours. These bands are based on respondents answering the hours question. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 30)
Work arrangements corresponded with different reported illustration hours. Respondents who worked only in illustration averaged 30 hours per week, and 86.3% of that group reported at least 31 illustration hours weekly. Respondents not working exclusively in illustration averaged 20 illustration hours per week; 62.7% of that group reported between 10 and 20 hours. The report identifies the non-exclusive group as 61.8% of respondents. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 31)
Having another job did not always mean illustration took only a small share of working time. Among respondents with another job, 15.3% said illustration accounted for more than half of their weekly working hours, and 14.7% reported spending at least 33 hours a week on illustration. These measures describe different aspects of the group’s schedule: the first is a share of total weekly work time, and the second is an hours threshold. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 31)
Illustrator employment statistics: Illustration earnings
The State of Illustration’s 2024 survey reports annual median income for full-time illustrators in three geographic categories:
| Location | Median annual income | Population described |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | £31,249.25 GBP | Full-time illustrators based in the UK |
| United States | $56,697.90 USD | Full-time illustrators based in the US |
| Europe excluding the UK | €17,270.87 EUR | Full-time illustrators based in Europe, excluding the UK |
These are survey medians in local currencies, not converted into a common currency. The page identifies the figures as based on its 2024 illustrator survey. It does not make these amounts national labor statistics, and the differing currencies and regional groups do not support a direct purchasing-power comparison. (State of Illustration, “What does an illustrator earn?”)
Illustrator employment statistics: Income stability
Illustration income varied from month to month for 87.4% of APIC survey respondents who answered the income-variability question. Only 1.7% said their illustration income was regular from one month to the next. These responses indicate that, within this Catalonia-focused sample, month-to-month consistency was uncommon. They do not measure the size of income changes or establish why income varied. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 40)
Respondents also rated annual variation on a five-point scale, where 1 meant no variation and 5 meant very variable. A total of 82.5% selected level 4 or 5. This is a self-rating of how variable income was over the year, rather than a recorded percentage change in earnings. Read alongside the month-to-month result, it suggests that income variability was a common reported feature of respondents’ illustration work. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 40)
Illustrator employment statistics: Finding clients and time spent seeking work
Finding clients also took time. Among the 120 APIC respondents who answered the question about weekly client-search hours, the mean was 12.5 hours per week. A majority, 52.5%, reported spending one to five hours seeking clients weekly, while 15.8% spent more than five hours. The mean and response bands summarize different parts of the distribution, and the survey result applies to those who answered this question. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 32)
The report also compares time spent seeking work among respondents who did not work exclusively in illustration. In that group, 10.6% said more than 30% of their weekly working time went to looking for work. This percentage measures a share of working time, not a number of hours, and should be kept separate from the 12.5-hour average reported for client search across the 120 respondents. (APIC, 2025 report, p. 32)