PR Careers: Where to Start, What It Pays, How to Move Up
A PR career runs through six rungs, from Account Coordinator to Chief Communications Officer. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a May 2025 median wage of $74,750 for public relations specialists and $146,910 for public relations managers, and lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry requirement. This page maps every EPR guide on PR jobs, pay, degrees, internships, resumes and interviews, by career stage.
Which PR career guide do you need first?
The right first PR career guide depends on your career stage, and the table below matches each stage to one EPR page.
The PR career ladder has six rungs: Account Coordinator, Account Executive, Senior Account Executive or Account Supervisor, Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer. EPR's PR career ladder explains the work and the gate at each rung, and what every PR job title means defines the titles that agencies and in-house teams use.
The year ranges in the ladder are EPR rules of thumb for a typical path, not survey data. BLS says public relations managers typically need five years or more of related experience. The independent route is covered in the guide to the publicist and consultant career path.
What do PR jobs pay?
BLS reports a May 2025 median wage of $74,750 for public relations specialists, with the lowest-paid 10 percent earning less than $44,110 and the highest-paid 10 percent earning more than $135,150. Public relations managers had a median of $146,910.
BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry requirement for public relations specialists, and several majors lead there. EPR's PR degrees and majors guide compares nine undergraduate majors, and the PR and communications schools ranking covers 25 or more programs in the US and abroad.
A first PR job usually starts with an internship, a targeted resume and a prepared interview. The PR internship playbook lays out a week-by-week plan, and internships by employer type compares agency, in-house, nonprofit and government placements.
EPR's job-market reporting follows the PR cuts after the Omnicom-IPG merger and the new roles that AI creates. Read the PR hiring report for where openings sit, and where PR jobs moved after Omnicom-IPG for the second wave of cuts.
Agency, in-house and independent PR careers differ in client exposure, promotion speed and pay structure. According to EPR's career ladder guide, agency promotions tend to come faster at junior levels, while the top in-house roles often pay more than comparable agency roles.
EPR's analysis of women in PR leadership covers four practices that close the leadership gap: written promotion criteria, default flexibility, formal sponsorship and audited pay equity.
If you already work in PR, start with the PR career ladder and the salary map. If you are still choosing a path, start with the degrees guide. For the long-form version of this map, read Careers in PR and Communications in 2026.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
