Back in April, the prominent ezine A List Apart started a survey of "people who make websites." The findings of their Web Design Survey have been announced earlier this month and are available for free download as a 1.6 MB, 82 page PDF document.

From the announcement: "Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide."

The survey results are ordered into 15 chapters, excluding introductions, thank you notes and the like; the data gathered a wide area of topics, from demographic information to technical proficiency. Tables, bar and pie charts illustrate the large amount of data nicely.

Nearly half of the survey respondents were from the U.S., and one third were from the EU. According to the survey, web designers are predominantly young (21 to 32 yeas of age), Caucasian, male, and well educated. Nevertheless, few respondents believe there is race, gender or age bias in the field. Almost all of them have a personal web site or blog, and profess enthusiasm for the field. Nearly a quarter of all the people who took the survey are freelancers, but disproportionately large number of designers, around 40%, say they work from home.

In terms of skills the web designers claim to possess, markup (HTML and XHTML), back-end (PHP,ASP), CSS and JavaScript take the top places, in that order.

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