Public Relations Specialists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Public Relations Specialists worker at that point in the distribution, so $95,940 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 280,590 people in May 2024, 0.18% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 31,070 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 29.3% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in District of Columbia, whose location quotient of 14.04 says this work is 14.04 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $88,730 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($129,480) is 3.2 times the 10th percentile ($40,750), a gap of $88,730 a year. The mean of $80,310 sitting above the median of $69,780 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 31,070 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $97,800. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Public Relations Specialists stands number 128 by employment and number 287 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations, the group median wage is $66,220 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 5% more than its group median, and it supplies 14.1% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 15 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $69,780, 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 24,000 jobs, 8.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 362 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $48,120 a year, against $114,690 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $69,780 works out to $5,815 a month before taxes, $2,684 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,342 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($51,970) to the 75th ($95,940) is worth $43,970 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $76,758 would sit between the median ($69,780) and the 75th percentile ($95,940), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $51,970, is $17,810 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Sound Engineering Technicians, Media and Communication Equipment Workers, All Other, Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners, Music Directors and Composers, Set and Exhibit Designers, Lighting Technicians. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.