Public Relations Managers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Public Relations Managers worker at that point in the distribution, so $198,000 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 76,060 people in May 2024, 0.05% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 9,140 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 34.4% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in District of Columbia, whose location quotient of 24.70 says this work is 24.70 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $138,520 and the mean of $163,520. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 49 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

The state spread for Public Relations Managers runs from the $185,810 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (9,140 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Public Relations Managers stands number 313 by employment and number 43 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Management Occupations, the group median wage is $106,980 across 38 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 29% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 13 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $138,520, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 11,140 jobs, 14.6% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $124,510 a year, against $266,730 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $138,520 a year is $11,543 a month gross, $5,328 every two weeks, $2,664 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($102,300) to the 75th ($198,000) is worth $95,700 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $11,543 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $152,372 would sit between the median ($138,520) and the 75th percentile ($198,000), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $102,300, is $36,220 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Management Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Administrative Services Managers, Food Service Managers, Industrial Production Managers, Human Resources Managers, Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers, Chief Executives. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.