What this occupation does
UI and UX designers (BLS O*NET title: web and digital interface designers) design the layout, interaction, and visual interface of websites, apps, and digital products. The role spans user research, information architecture, wireframing and prototyping, visual and interaction design, accessibility, design-system stewardship, and usability testing across product teams.
The exposure score in context
The ILO 2025 refined Generative AI Occupational Exposure Index places ui and ux designers in the moderate exposure gradient. ILO 2025 places web and digital interface designers in the moderate exposure gradient. Routine layout, component production, and boilerplate front-end work are exposed to generative design and code tools; user research, interaction and systems design, accessibility, and product-stakeholder judgement are augmentation-prone rather than displaceable at task level.
The mapping uses ISCO-08 code 2513 (BLS-published SOC-to-ISCO crosswalk). The full methodology, including the dominant-match rule for one-to-many crosswalks, is at /methodology/#algorithm.
The top five tasks, classified
The top five O*NET 30.2 tasks for this occupation, each tagged Displaceable / Changing / Growing per the Brookings 2024 task-level rubric. The tag definitions are at /glossary/#displaceable-task, /glossary/#changing-task, and /glossary/#growing-task.
- Growing: Conduct user research to determine design requirements and analyse user feedback to improve design quality. User research and interpreting real usability feedback involve human judgement that grows in importance as AI handles more production.
- Changing: Develop new visual design concepts and modify concepts based on stakeholder feedback. AI tools generate first-draft interface concepts; the concepting that meets brand, product, and accessibility constraints and the stakeholder-feedback loop remain human-led.
- Changing: Design, build, or maintain websites, using authoring or scripting languages, content creation tools, management tools, and digital media. AI now produces first-draft layouts and front-end code from a brief; delivery, integration, and accountability for the working product remain human.
- Growing: Collaborate with management or users to develop e-commerce strategies and to integrate these strategies with websites. Product and e-commerce strategy involves cross-functional judgement that AI supports but does not replace.
- Growing: Confer with management or development teams to prioritise needs, resolve conflicts, develop content criteria, or choose solutions. Prioritisation and conflict resolution across product teams are augmentation-prone per Brookings 2024 and grow as AI handles more discrete design production.
What is growing in this role
The BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035 outlook for ui and ux designers is faster than average. Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035.
Per the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025, the top three growing skills relevant to this role are: Creative thinking, AI and big data, Technological literacy. The skills are mapped to the occupation's O*NET skills profile.
Brookings 2024 finds interface and product-design production tasks exposed, while user research, accessibility, interaction design, and design-system stewardship are augmentation-prone.
UI and UX Designers in the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025
UI and UX designers appear on the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 fastest-growing roles list, ranked 8th among the fastest-growing jobs to 2030 by net employer expectations. The report names AI and information-processing technologies and broadening digital access among the top drivers of growth for its fastest-growing roles, and the role contrasts directly with graphic design, which appears on the same report's fastest-declining list. Source: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 (January 2025). The WEF lists are occupation-family level and global, ranked by change to 2030; they are distinct from the BLS 2025-2035 US projection above. The full named growing and declining lists are on what is growing.
AI's impact on UI/UX design jobs: 2025-2026 outlook and statistics
For 2025 and 2026 the data on design work splits in two. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks UI and UX designers 8th on its fastest-growing roles list to 2030, even as it places graphic designers on the fastest-declining list for the first time. The signal is that employer demand is shifting away from static visual production toward interactive, systems-level product design as more companies digitise their services and products.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a standalone projection for UI/UX designers. It groups web and digital interface designers (SOC 15-1255) with web developers in a single Occupational Outlook Handbook profile, projected to grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average across all occupations, with about 13,600 combined openings a year. Within that group, web and digital interface designers held about 132,700 jobs in 2025 and earned a median annual wage of $104,000 (May 2025 OEWS).
Generative tools now produce first-draft interfaces, component layouts, and boilerplate front-end code from a prompt, which compresses the routine production side of the role. What grows is the harder-to-automate core: user research, accessibility and interaction design, design-system stewardship, and the product judgement that turns requirements into usable interfaces. Designers who pair visual craft with UX research, systems thinking, and AI-tool fluency sit on the growing side of the split.
Sources: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Web Developers and Digital Designers; BLS OEWS 15-1255 (May 2025); WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025.
Similar occupations
O*NET 30.2 lists the following related roles. Each links to its own deep dive where one is published.
Industry context
This role sits primarily in the Technology industry. The industry-level rollup includes the cross-occupation exposure profile and the BLS-published industry-level outlook.
How this assessment was made
The full methodology is at /methodology/: ILO 2025 refined index for the gradient, Brookings 2024 rubric for the task tags, BLS 2025-2035 for the growth outlook, WEF 2025 for the skills demand. The pre-empted critiques are at /how-to-argue-with-this/.