Analysis · October 28, 2026 · data as of October 28, 2026

Advertised pay on one remote job board, by place, title and seniority

On one remote board, advertised pay for US-located design roles has a median near 135,000 USD a year, against about 42,000 elsewhere, and only 6.6% of listings carry a pay figure.

Of 20,492 listings in the Hired Creative export of 2026-10-28, 1,359 (6.6%) carry a positive numeric pay figure. One remote job board, Remote Rocketship, supplies 741 of them, and three sources together supply 77.0%. On that board, the median advertised pay midpoint for roles located in the US is 135,000 USD a year (n=528). For roles located elsewhere it is about 42,000 (n=188). The figures describe advertised pay on one board. They are not salaries paid, and they are not the creative job market.

Key points

• Only 6.6% of Hired Creative's 20,492 listings carry a numeric pay figure, so every band here describes a small, self-selected sample.
• On one remote job board, advertised pay for US-located design roles has a median of about 135,000 USD a year (n=528), against about 42,000 elsewhere (n=188).
• That is roughly two and a half to three times, depending on how employers are weighted, and it describes advertised pay on one board, not wages in any country.
• Within the US listings on that board, advertised pay differs by title group and rises with seniority words in titles, though the two are not fully separated.

What the data covers

Pay is rare in our listings and unevenly spread. The 9,675 listings from the LinkedIn feeds contribute 11 pay figures. A further 595 listings carry pay text but no usable number. Because 77.0% of all figures come from three sources, a difference between regions in the full export could be a source-mix effect. Hired Creative therefore compares places only inside one board, where both sides follow the same display conventions. The export has no currency or period column. Remote Rocketship displays salaries as annual US dollar figures, which is the only basis for reading its numbers that way.

Within that board, listings that carry a pay figure are also unevenly spread by place:

So the non-US bands below describe a minority of listings, 161 of 860 for the pooled group. Those listings may not resemble the rest. The data give no reason for the difference, and Hired Creative does not offer one.

US and non-US advertised pay

The comparison uses the midpoint of each stated range, in USD per year as the board displays it.

The middle half of US roles runs from 102,500 to 173,616. For all non-US roles together it runs from 17,504 to 75,984. Canada is the only country other than the US with at least 30 rows, so every other place sits in one pooled group and no country ranking is possible.

The raw ratio of US to non-US medians is 3.21. After matching on title group and seniority, it is 3.03. Rows are not independent, because a few employers supply several non-US rows each, and counting each employer once lowers the ratio. Hired Creative therefore states the gap as roughly two and a half to three times, and does not treat any interval or p-value as a precise estimate. The ratio describes advertised pay for remote roles on one board. It is not a pay gap between countries' labour markets.

Many non-US figures are not round numbers, which suggests the board converts local pay to USD. This was not checked.

US pay by title group and seniority

Inside the US listings on the board, medians differ by title group. Groups come from title keywords, and only groups with at least 30 rows are shown.

These are differences in advertised pay by title group on this board. They do not show that one discipline pays more than another. The art and creative direction group also holds design directors and heads of design, so it leans senior, and the product group holds some researcher titles. Motion, video, 3D, marketing and social roles are too rare among pay-stated listings to give a band.

Advertised pay also rises with seniority words in the title:

Outside the US, titles with no seniority word have a median of 30,000 (n=106) and senior, lead or principal titles 73,476 (n=68). Intern and junior roles are too few to report. Seniority and title group overlap, and the two are not fully separated here.

The 135,000 median uses Remote Rocketship only. Adding US rows from other sources changes it, and currency and pay period are not verified for those sources. Any US figure from Hired Creative's listings has to name its scope.

Method

Data: the Hired Creative listings export dated 2026-10-28, 20,492 rows. A row has a numeric pay figure when its stated minimum or maximum is a positive number. Coverage shares are computed over all rows and by source and region.

Frame: Remote Rocketship rows with a numeric figure, read as annual US dollars per the board's display. The figure for each row is the midpoint of the stated range. Rows with a midpoint under 1,000 are treated as hourly and not used. Rows whose location is only a hiring-region label are not used in the US versus non-US comparison. Place is the text before the separator in the board's location field. Countries with fewer than 30 listings, and any whose separate reporting could identify a sensitive location, are pooled. A cell is reported only with at least 30 rows.

Groups: title group and seniority come from keywords in the title, with the export's level field used first for seniority where filled. On a hand-read sample of 60 titles, 55 were correct, 2 wrong and 3 ambiguous. The classifier was adjusted after an earlier sample and the check reused the same random seed, so it is not a fresh test. Engineering and technical design titles, which are not creative roles, stay in the frame and are not shown as a creative group.

Statistics: medians and quartiles per cell. The adjusted gap is the mean log pay gap between US and non-US, averaged over title group by seniority cells with at least 3 rows on each side, weighted to the non-US mix, then converted to a ratio. A bootstrap (4,000 resamples) and a permutation test within cells (2,000 shuffles) were run at row level. They treat rows as independent and so understate uncertainty.

Limits

• No cause is shown. The data cannot say why more US listings carry pay, or whether the gap reflects labour markets, how employers set remote pay, or how the board converts local pay to USD.
• One board dominates. The bands describe pay advertised on this board, not the creative job market, a country's wages, or what anyone is paid.
• The export cannot show whether an employer or the board supplied a figure. Currency and period are read from the board's display convention only.
• A midpoint of a stated range is not a salary offered or paid. Bonus, equity, hourly and contract rates are not separated.
• Non-US is thin. Only Canada reaches 30 rows, and the pooled group is a minority of the board's listings.
• Title keywords are an imperfect proxy for discipline and level, and the title-group differences partly reflect seniority.
• The adjusted gap rests on small cells. It is a summary of this sample, not an estimate for a population.
• This is one snapshot. It says nothing about change over time.

A critic would say that a gap of this size between US and lower-cost markets is expected, and that the finding is mainly about who states pay. That reading is consistent with the data, which is why the coverage figures come first.

Sources

• Remote Rocketship, remote full-time jobs (read 2026-10-28: salaries shown as annual USD figures)
• Hired Creative listings export, 2026-10-28 (n=20,492)

Published by Hired Creative from its own listings and the sources above. Spotted an error? Tell us.