The average UK PR professional is paid £48,247 pa, nearly twice the average salary for the UK workforce as a whole, according to PR Week.
In 2010, the average salary for those in 'all service industries' was £25,855.
According to the survey, press officers average £28,384; senior account mangers £36,514; media managers £39,091; head of comms/external affairs £55,203; PR directors £55,516; chief executives/mds £60,925; and comms directors £83,191.
The figures show that men in PR earn significantly more than women. The average salary for a male UK PR professional is £62,932, whereas the average salary for a woman PR professional is £39,987.
PR salaries are said not to have increased a great deal during the recession but the "entry-level account executive position has broken the £20,000 barrier."
PR Week notes: "There is a perception among some - journalists, for example - that PR professionals are extremely well-paid and many a hack has declared that if they ever 'needed the money' they would move into PR.
"However, among other industries, PR is very much considered the 'poor cousin'."
I can think of poorer cousins - like journalists working on local papers.
I recently ran a chart on pay scales at Johnston Press-owned South Yorkshire Newspapers, where NUJ members have just returned to work after a two month strike over job cuts.
This showed trainees on £14,341; senior reporters, photographers and subs on £20,741; chief sub on £22, 275, associated editor on £24, 280 and an editor on £25,000.
Thanks for the post - strange that PR is such a female dominated industry, but we are still largely paid less than men.
ReplyDeleteI read this and wept - but for different reasons. I'm a director of a PR agency north of the Watford Gap, and the salaries quoted bear little relation to the pay scales up here. Perhaps the London financial PR bods are skewing the results? Who knows. Either way, I regard these survey results as somewhat less than accurate of the PR industry as a whole - outside of London, anyway.
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