Today, Muck Rack introduced their first-ever “State of PR Salaries” report. Upon reading it, I noticed a few interesting things I wanted to share.
Muck Rack surveyed 1,887 PR pros from April 12 to May 3, 2022, about their salaries. What does this mean for PR pros? Here are a few data points with an in-depth analysis. You can view the full study here.
Key Takeaways
- More than half of PR pros at companies with $1B in revenue earn 150k+ annually.
- PR pros in travel and tourism, followed by healthcare work more hours per week than other industries.
- The majority of public relations managers landed in the 70k-100k salary range.
- Top paying industries include airlines/aviation, apparel/fashion, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, automotive, etc.
- PR pros at companies with 5k-10k employees have the highest annual salaries.
- 63% of pros at nonprofits and 63% in government work more than 40 hours per week.
- The most demanding industries for PR pros include travel/tourism, healthcare, government, tech, food & beverage, and nonprofit.
- 49% of brands will increase their comms/PR budgets in the next year.
What Does This Mean for PR Pros?
Honestly, as a 23-year-old PR pro, these salary numbers look amazing to me. However, I’m not sure I would be saying this if I was 10 years into my career.
The data shows that almost half of brands are looking to increase their PR/comms budgets in the next year. This is great news. Brands are still seeing the value of PR and communications and it is not going away. I can say I’m happy about that.
On another note, I’m wondering what leverage PR pros are using while negotiating salary? How are they measuring their PR efforts to ask for a raise? The more we can track our impact—the better we can get paid.
How do you track your PR impact? Leave a comment below.
I would love to connect with other PR pros and publicists. Leave a comment if you would like to connect to chat strategy, the changing media landscape, or even to network! I would love to meet more PR pros out there.
