Marketing & PR specialist salary: a local check for a national number

For Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, the fixed national reference was $78,760 a year. Of the 387 metros in our frame, 383 had usable local 25th & 75th wage points. The reference was below the 25th point in 2 metros, within the 25th–75th band in 278 & above the 75th point in 103. Four comparisons were unavailable.

For Public Relations Specialists, the separate national reference was $74,750. Here, 362 metros had usable quartile points: 5 placed the reference below the 25th point, 289 within the middle band & 68 above the 75th point. The remaining 25 metros had unavailable comparisons. Each occupation keeps its own reference & usable denominator.

The middle band is deliberately broad. It runs from the published 25th wage point to the 75th, with the local median between them. Falling inside it does not mean that the national reference equals the local median. Nor does being above it identify what a business would have to pay for a particular vacancy.

The fuller comparison helps make that distinction visible. In 241 marketing & market research metros and 228 PR metros, the reference lay strictly between the local median & 75th point. Another 102 & 67, respectively, placed it between the 75th & 90th points; 1 area in each occupation placed it above the 90th. These remain brackets between published estimates, rather than precise ranks for a proposed salary.

These are counts of areas. A smaller metro contributes 1 observation, just as a larger one does. The 103 marketing & market research metros above the band are not a count of employers, a share of workers or an estimate of available candidates. We did not weight areas by employment or combine the 2 occupations into a single salary population.

The pattern gives the national reference a limited, useful role. It can remain an initial point of discussion. Before using it as local context, check the relevant row: the same national amount occupies different parts of different local distributions. Our calculation identifies those positions; it does not establish that a location causes a wage difference.^[2]

A search for a marketing specialist salary can lead to a broad statistical group. The occupation used here is Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, code 13-1161. It includes analysts as well as marketing specialists. Keeping the full name matters when deciding whether the work in a proposed job resembles the population behind the wage figure.

Some social media duties have a documented connection to this group. O*NET’s Search Marketing Strategists specialty lists Social Media Specialist among reported job titles & includes social campaign work. Its wage information belongs to the broader 13-1161 occupation. That supports reading the duties carefully; it does not isolate social media specialists within our wage data.^[3]

Public Relations Specialists, code 27-3031, is a different population. O*NET describes work concerned with an organization’s public image & communications, including possible social media specialization.^[4] A business preparing audience research & campaign analysis may be considering different work from one preparing media responses & public communications, even when both roles publish social content.

Write the responsibilities before borrowing a number. Record which duties make an occupation relevant & which do not fit. A title such as “social media manager” cannot settle that match by itself. This study neither measures a separate manager population nor tests a rule for classifying an individual vacancy. When the role changes, revisit the comparison rather than silently switching labels around the same wage.

Abilene, Texas, provides a concrete reading example. It was the first eligible metro code used in our earlier source check, before the comparison results were examined. We retain it to explain the table, rather than select a location for a dramatic result. The complete download supplies the same fields for every metro in the frame.

For the marketing & market research occupation in Abilene, the published annual median was $58,980, the 75th point was $75,740 & the 90th point was $104,150. The national reference, $78,760, lay between the local 75th & 90th points. That bracket is the answer we can report. We do not interpolate an exact percentile between its endpoints.

For PR in the same metro, the local median was $56,830 & the 75th point was $75,950. Its own national reference, $74,750, lay between those 2 points. One metro therefore produces different placements for the 2 occupational references. Neither result can be carried across to the other occupation merely because the work shares a social channel.

Keep the geography equally precise. Abilene is a whole metropolitan statistical area here, not just the municipal boundary. The local frame includes 387 whole metros in the 50 states & District of Columbia; a metro spanning state lines appears once. These results do not cover nonmetropolitan locations or establish which geographic reference an employer should choose for a remote role.^[2][7]

The useful handoff is a short explanation another person can check. Begin with the work: the recurring responsibilities, decisions the employee would own & outputs the business needs. Connect those duties to the chosen occupation description. If an important part of the job falls outside it, put that question in the brief instead of disguising the mismatch with a familiar title.

Next, preserve the wage context in one place. Record the occupation’s full name & code, the whole metro, the May 2025 period, the local 25th & 75th points and the fixed national reference. Add its observed placement. This gives a colleague the evidence needed to understand the comparison without implying that the national figure is an approved budget.

Keep distribution labels intact. A 25th wage point does not mean “junior,” & a 75th point does not mean “senior.” The data do not assign experience, capabilities or performance to those amounts. Translating percentile labels into experience tiers would give the brief a claim this study has not measured.

Finally, name what remains to be established for the actual hire. The employer’s responsibilities, working arrangements, compensation package & relevant current recruitment evidence need their own review. The workflow below is a suggested way to organize that discussion, rather than a hiring process tested by our analysis. Its purpose is to keep the statistical reference understandable as the brief passes between people.

Consider an invented retailer preparing an employee role based in the Abilene metro. The owner wants help researching customers, reviewing campaign results & turning those findings into recommendations for product promotion. The business, responsibilities & decisions in this example are fictional. The Abilene wage values remain the actual published estimates described above.

The first brief simply says, “Marketing specialist; national salary reference $78,760.” The owner improves it by explaining why the marketing & market research occupation may be relevant: customer research & campaign analysis are substantial proposed duties. The brief also leaves a review question about how much of the job would instead be content production. Naming that uncertainty helps the recruiter assess the comparison.

The wage note now reads: “BLS May 2025, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, 13-1161; Abilene, TX metropolitan area. Published local 25th point $41,280; median $58,980; 75th point $75,740. The published U.S. median reference of $78,760 is above the local 75th point & below the 90th point of $104,150.”^[1][2] The note preserves a finding without converting it into an offer.

The owner does not label the reference a senior salary or assume that offering it will secure a particular applicant. The next question is more concrete: what evidence supports a compensation decision for these duties & this working arrangement now? The finance colleague can assess the wider employment costs separately, while the recruiter reviews the role & relevant current evidence. No proposed offer or recruiting outcome is supplied by this example.

The handoff also names the immediate work: a recurring customer-research summary, an explanation of campaign results & recommendations the owner can review. Those fictional outputs make the responsibilities easier to discuss than “handle marketing.” The recruiter can ask what research & analysis the job requires, while the owner can distinguish that assignment from filming products or answering press inquiries. The wage note stays connected to the work being proposed.

Suppose the owner adds responsibility for media inquiries & public statements. That change prompts another discussion about the work. It does not justify borrowing the PR band when it happens to support a preferred budget, or averaging the 2 occupations. The brief can record the additional responsibilities & revisit the occupational match. Keeping the original note visible makes that revision understandable instead of letting a salary label conceal a different job.

The word salary is useful in a reader’s question, but the source measure is an OEWS employee wage estimate. BLS includes covered full- & part-time wage and salary employees in nonfarm establishments; self-employed workers are outside the survey. The annual figure therefore cannot stand in for a freelancer’s fee or an agency retainer.^[5]

The wage definition also differs from both base salary alone & total employer cost. It covers straight-time gross pay, including specified incentive payments, while excluding overtime, supplementary benefits & other components. A staffing budget needs its own treatment of the employment package; this study supplies no universal amount or percentage to add.^[5]

BLS generally uses a 2,080-hour work year when converting hourly & annual wages for most occupations. That convention does not establish each employee’s observed annual earnings or create a full-time-only sample. We used the published annual points directly. Dividing one by hours would not produce a comparable contractor quotation: the work arrangement, covered payments & business costs would still differ.^[6]

Completeness means keeping the frame when a wage comparison is unavailable. For marketing & market research, 3 occupation–metro rows were absent from the complete source export & 1 published row had unavailable wage points. For PR, 23 rows were absent & 2 had unavailable wages. All remain in the 774-row download, with those different statuses preserved.^[2]

An absent occupation row is not zero employment. An unavailable wage is not a wage of zero. BLS describes confidentiality & quality requirements for publication, but an omission does not disclose a specific reason for that cell. We do not rename every absence a small sample, estimate the missing wage or replace it with another occupation’s figure.^[8]

When the relevant row is unavailable, the brief has an open evidence question. The complete table makes that visible before someone carries a number forward. It also prevents a comparison based only on available rows from quietly appearing to cover every metro. Usable totals remain 383 for marketing & market research and 362 for PR, against the common frame of 387 areas.

We used the May 2025 national & metropolitan OEWS files, acquired October 24, 2026. The local frame was defined independently of occupation availability from the release’s geographic definitions. It contains every eligible whole MSA in the 50 states & District of Columbia, counted once. Nonmetropolitan areas, territories & state totals are outside this local frame.^[1][7]

For each occupation, we compared its own BLS published U.S. median with the local annual 10th, 25th, median, 75th & 90th wage points. The fuller bracket requires all 5 usable points; the simpler middle-band comparison requires usable 25th & 75th points. The usable totals happened to match for each occupation. We retained unavailable rows instead of allowing publication coverage to define the area list.

The quartile band includes its endpoints. In the fuller comparison, an exact match would be recorded as a published boundary with every matching point label; none occurred here. We used published numeric values without another rounding step, an invented near-equality tolerance or an exact-percentile interpolation. Valid high numeric wages remain numeric; a source open-ended bound is preserved as a bound rather than treated as an exact point.^[2][8]

The underlying May 2025 estimates use 6 semiannual survey panels from November 2022 through May 2025, with the release’s model-based estimation procedures.^[5] They are dated wage estimates, rather than October 2026 offers. Published rounding & estimation matter near a boundary. Standard employment & mean-wage error measures do not provide the percentile errors & covariance needed for confidence intervals around these comparisons, so we do not report significance or attach confidence intervals to the metro counts.^[6]

The comparison principle is established. Our contribution is the complete, inspectable application to these 2 occupations: every metro, each reference, all 5 points or source statuses, and the resulting comparisons. The downloads separate displayed findings from the full 774-row inventory & provide the method and reproduction code. A national number can start the conversation; a brief carrying its occupation, local band, date & remaining questions gives the next person something more useful to assess.^[2]