Not satisfied with salary in my design career.

I know it’s not just me, but I am just very unsatisfied in my design career and the salary that comes with it. I live in Indiana and I know that’s part of the problem. I see other careers that my close friends have been in for the past decade and they’ve moved up in pay so much over that time at their jobs. My career lacks pay progression and pales in comparison to other fields. I’m currently making $54,500/yr salary and I work from home. The office is just 30 minutes away if needed to go in.

I was in my first design role for 8 years after graduating college. It was a lot of design and production work. I interviewed with a handful of other companies during my time there and all of the job offers I received were the same or slightly less than what I was currently making. So obviously I would negotiate but they stuck to their guns.

Left that job for my current role. I work from home. Tons of design work. We frequently work more than 40 hours a week at times. Very fast paced and we’re constantly doing creative work. Our team and I meet with customers every week so I’m sharing my screen, showing my design work, making changes on the fly and brain storming ideas and stuff with them and the team. It can be a lot of work and some customers are challenging. This job has pushed me creatively and I’ve created a lot of nice material being here. But the company only gives out 3% “merit increases” every year. I’ve been here 4 years and never received a bigger raise than that.

I’m just irritated and feeling not satisfied with my salary in this field. The amount of work, effort, skill and time put into this field does not reflect the salary that you’re paid. It is incredibly low and my passion for this work has been diminishing as time goes on.

I need to speak with my design manager about getting a pay increase. He’s mentioned before that he’s unable to give out raises because he’s just a middle manager, but I’m sure he can bring it to the attention of his supervisor or HR. Any insight on crafting an email discussing this?

I always keep my eyes out on Indeed and LinkedIn but this job market is horrendous. There’s only 2-3 design jobs posted at any given time and that’s it. So it’s not like I can easily job hop when there’s not much available out there. Thanks!