Fashion Design Career Outlook
According to the BLS, there were 22,700 employed fashion designers in 2008. 31% of these worked for fashion merchant wholesalers, 13% worked for apparel manufacturers, and most of the remainder were self employed.
The BLS expects little or no change in the employment of fashion designers from 2008 to 2018; their forecast calls for the addition of only 200 new fashion design jobs; a growth rate of 1%, lower than the overall civilian workforce growth forecast of 8.2%.