It was long ago I worked in a multinational company for 5 yrs as a graphic designer when I first heard of UX Design. I really thought of UXD as something that isn't for me. Until I got an invitation to work for a Swiss based software development startup company as a Senior Marketing Designer. It was a tough work since I'm doing 2 roles as a designer that does marketing stuff and designer for development (working with devs). It was then that I got introduced to do a UX and UI related work where I was tasked to do UI designs for a certain mobile and web app. It was then I realized that Interface designing alone is not enough to come up with a good output but it was needed to study the overall experience of the user when interacting with your design. I was also told by my bosses that eventually my salary would be higher because of my role transition since being a user experience designer is paid higher than a regular designer.
According to Payscale US - UX Designers earn almost twice of that of the average graphic designer. E.g. a graphic designer in the US receives $42,000 while UX designers receives $74,000.
UX Designers also are high in demand, since UX Design is closely related to business, companies prefer to keep the (UX design) job within the organisation rather than outsourcing them.