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Public relations specialists

Also called PR specialist, Communications specialist, Publicist, Media relations specialist, Corporate communications specialist

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 283,380 US public relations specialists, with median pay of $74,750 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2012, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 19,000 from 1960, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for public relations specialists: AI-powered media monitoring, media database targeting, 2015 to 2023.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 1.8% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Public relations specialists: jobs and pay since 1960 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3031

Chicago

Future History. "Public relations specialists: jobs and pay since 1960." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3031.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_27_3031, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Public relations specialists: jobs and pay since 1960}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-3031}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
19001925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Press Agent / Publicity Agent (theatrical and political promotion era)
Known then as Publicity Counsel / Publicity Director (emerging corporate communications era)
Known then as Public Relations Counsel / Public Relations Director (post-WWII professionalization era)
Known then as Public Relations Specialist / Communications Specialist (PRSA accreditation era)
Known then as Communications Specialist / Public Affairs Specialist (corporate communications expansion era)
Known then as Public Relations Specialists (BLS SOC 27-3031)
Known today as Public Relations Specialists (BLS SOC 27-3031)
Projected to still be called Public Relations Specialists (BLS SOC 27-3031)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
283K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$74,750
Est.

≈ $72,834 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1900

George V.S. Michaelis, Thomas Marvin, and Herbert Small open the Publicity Bureau in Boston, widely credited as the first commercial public relations firm in the United States. Their initial clients include Harvard University and, soon after, AT&T. The firm operates until 1911, when it is superseded by a new generation of PR agencies founded directly by former journalists.

Beat · 1906

October 1906: Ivy Lee, representing the Pennsylvania Railroad after a passenger train derailment near Gap, Pennsylvania, that killed 50 people, invites reporters to the crash site, provides transportation, and distributes a written statement committing to factual ongoing updates. He calls the document a Declaration of Principles. It is now recognized as the first modern press release and the first formal statement of press relations ethics. Lee's approach was the opposite of standard railroad practice; its commercial effectiveness over the following years encouraged other industries to adopt professional press relations.

Beat · 1923

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the person who coined the phrase "public relations counsel," publishes "Crystallizing Public Opinion," the first textbook on PR, and teaches the first university course in public relations at New York University. Bernays argues that PR is an applied social science that can and should shape public opinion through targeted communication, not merely report corporate activity. His campaigns for American Tobacco Company (promoting cigarette smoking among women using feminist framing, 1929) and Procter and Gamble (Ivory soap sculpture competitions) demonstrated what organized persuasion could achieve, and also raised the ethical questions that would shadow the profession for decades.

Beat · 1947

The Public Relations Society of America is established in 1947 from the merger of the American Council on Public Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Counsel. The first PRSA annual conference is held in Chicago. PRSA's founding marks the moment the occupation formally constituted itself as a profession with shared ethics, peer networks, and eventually a credentialing system. The society adopts its first Code of Professional Standards in 1950 and establishes the Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) credential in 1964.

Beat · 1954

August 3, 1954: Herbert Muschel founds PR Newswire in New York City, charging clients $15 per day to distribute press releases simultaneously to major news organizations via a private teleprinter network. The service is created specifically to solve the distribution bottleneck that forced practitioners to mail or hand-deliver releases individually. PR Newswire is sold to Western Union in 1971, which had provided its teleprinter infrastructure. By the 1990s the service is distributing releases electronically via the internet; by 2016 it is acquired by Cision for $841 million, making it part of the largest PR software platform in the world.

Beat · 1973

Betsy Plank becomes the first female president of the Public Relations Society of America, a milestone in a profession that had been predominantly male at its leadership levels since the Ivy Lee era. The feminization of PR practice had been underway since the 1960s: women entered the field in large numbers as specialists and account executives while men continued to dominate senior leadership. By the 1990s women outnumbered men at the practitioner level; by the 2020s the BLS data shows the occupation is approximately 65% female.

Beat · 1982

September-October 1982: Seven people in the Chicago area die after consuming Tylenol Extra-Strength capsules that had been laced with cyanide by an unknown perpetrator. Johnson and Johnson's response, managed by professional communications teams in coordination with CEO James Burke and advisor Harold Burson, includes a nationwide voluntary recall of 31 million bottles (absorbing a $100 million loss), the establishment of a toll-free consumer hotline and a separate media hotline, daily press conferences, and the introduction of the first tamper-resistant pharmaceutical packaging. The Tylenol crisis becomes the most-studied case study in crisis communications history and establishes the framework of transparent, rapid, stakeholder-centered response that every PR curriculum now teaches.

Beat · 2008

Barack Obama's presidential campaign makes extensive and coordinated use of social media including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to mobilize voters, raise money, and manage news cycles. The campaign's digital communications operation is widely studied in PR programs as the first demonstration that social media could be used at scale for strategic communications objectives. It accelerates the shift of PR practice toward social media management as a core competency and establishes the expectation that organizations of all sizes need a coherent social media presence.

Beat · 2012

PRSA formally redefines public relations in 2012 as "a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics," replacing the 1982 definition that framed PR as helping "organizations and their publics adapt mutually." The 2012 definition emphasizes process and relationships over outcomes, reflecting the shift in the field from outputs (press releases placed) to relationships (mutual understanding built). The redefinition is the result of a multi-year process involving member input and reflects how the internet and social media had changed what "reaching the public" actually meant.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace public relations specialists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+1.8%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 27-3031 (Public relations specialists): 314.5 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 320.2 thousand in 2035, a change of +5.7 thousand (+1.8%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (1.1% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
78.8%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 27-3031.00 Public Relations Specialists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.788, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.636 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.939; GPT-4-rated β 0.591. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for public relations specialists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor brand mentions, sentiment shifts, and emerging crisis signals across 270,000+ news sources and social channels in real time using AI-powered media monitoring dashboards (Meltwater, CisionOne, Brand24).

Monitor brand mentions, sentiment shifts, and emerging crisis signals across 270,000+ news sources and social channels in real time using AI-powered media monitoring dashboards (Meltwater, CisionOne, Brand24).[6],[7],[8]

Where your edge is

Set escalation thresholds and review AI-flagged sentiment spikes personally before briefing executives: AI monitors at scale but misses context and irony. Build a crisis response playbook that AI alerts trigger, not replace.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEdit and personalize AI-generated press release drafts in Prowly or Jasper (adjusting quotes, brand voice, and strategic angle) then distribute via PR Newswire or Business Wire.

Edit and personalize AI-generated press release drafts in Prowly or Jasper (adjusting quotes, brand voice, and strategic angle) then distribute via PR Newswire or Business Wire.[9],[10],[3]

Where your edge is

Own the strategic angle and quote sourcing; treat AI drafts as a first pass. Develop a house style guide your AI tool can learn so edits stay consistent.

AI is sitting alongside you hereProduce automated PR measurement reports, pulling coverage reach, sentiment scores, share of voice, and pitch placement impact from Prowly or CoverageBook, then adding narrative interpretation and strategic recommendations for clients or leadership.

Produce automated PR measurement reports, pulling coverage reach, sentiment scores, share of voice, and pitch placement impact from Prowly or CoverageBook, then adding narrative interpretation and strategic recommendations for clients or leadership.[2],[8]

Where your edge is

AI reports surface metrics; the strategic "so what" is yours. Learn to tie coverage data to business outcomes (pipeline, share price, NPS) so you can advise beyond impressions.

Where public relations specialists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Marketing Managers

PR Specialists already own brand narrative, audience research, and campaign measurement: the core of Marketing Manager work. The primary gap is paid media budgeting and performance channel ownership (SEM, display, email). Moving up to Marketing Manager adds headcount and budget authority. With AI automating content production and analytics, the differentiation shifts toward integrated strategy, making the PR-to-Marketing path shorter than it was.

What you'd add
  • · Paid media fundamentals (Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager)
  • · Marketing attribution modeling (UTM, multi-touch)
  • · CRM-based campaign tracking (HubSpot, Salesforce)
  • · Budget forecasting and vendor management
  • · Cross-functional stakeholder alignment at VP/C-suite level
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of public relations specialists changed since 1900?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Typewriter, telephone, and postal distribution (press agency era)

    The first PR practitioners were journalists who crossed the line into persuasion. Their tools were the tools of journalism: the typewriter, the telephone, the postal service, and personal relationships with newspaper editors. The press release, which Ivy Lee formalized in 1906, was typed, reproduced on carbon paper or mimeograph, and physically mailed or hand-delivered to newsrooms. The telephone was essential for pitching editors and managing breaking situations, but the distribution of written materials was entirely manual. A PR person of 1900-1920 spent a significant fraction of their working time in physical transit between their office and newspaper offices.

    Effect on the work

    The telephone allowed a single publicist to reach multiple newspaper desks without physical travel, expanding the number of outlets one person could maintain. The typewriter standardized written press materials, making the press release a reproducible format rather than a bespoke letter.

  • Wire service distribution (PR Newswire, 1954) and broadcast media relations

    On August 3, 1954, Herbert Muschel founded PR Newswire from a townhouse in New York City, charging a flat fee of $15 per day to simultaneously send press releases via teleprinter to a dozen major news organizations. The service was created specifically because manually distributing releases to multiple outlets was time-consuming and inconsistent. PR Newswire (later acquired by Western Union in 1971) transformed press release distribution from a physical operation into an electronic one. By the 1960s, it had expanded from New York to Philadelphia, Washington, and Pittsburgh, and a PR specialist could reach dozens of newsrooms with a single submission. Television added a parallel distribution channel: getting a spokesperson on the evening news required different skills and a different relationship toolset from newspaper pitching, creating the broadcast media relations subspecialty within PR.

    Effect on the work

    Wire services reduced the time cost of press release distribution substantially, allowing practitioners to handle more clients and more campaigns. The flip side was that all competitors had access to the same distribution, raising the threshold for what constituted a genuinely newsworthy release worth sending.

  • Fax machine and media database systems (PRSSA era of codified crisis response)

    The fax machine, which reached mass adoption in US offices by the mid-1980s, changed press release distribution a second time. It allowed same-day transmission of materials with letterhead and formatting intact, replacing the lag of postal mail for urgent communications. Media database systems (precursors to Muck Rack and Cision) emerged in the late 1980s as organizations began maintaining computerized contact lists of journalists, their beats, and their preferences. The other defining technology moment of this era was crisis management: the 1982 Tylenol poisonings, in which seven Chicago-area residents died after consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, established the template for modern crisis communications. Johnson and Johnson's response, which included a nationwide recall of tens of millions of bottles, a toll-free media hotline, and proactive press conferences, was managed by a professional communications team and became the model studied in every PR program. The crisis demonstrated that rapid, transparent, coordinated communications response was both an ethical obligation and a reputational asset.

    Effect on the work

    The fax machine eliminated the postal mail lag for press materials and reduced the per-release distribution cost further. Media database systems created a new specialist sub-function: the media relations coordinator who maintained and cleaned contact lists, a role that would later be partially automated.

  • Email, online newsrooms, and the World Wide Web (digital transition era)

    Email displaced the fax machine as the primary distribution channel for press releases through the late 1990s. PR Newswire added internet distribution in the late 1990s, and online newsrooms (pages on corporate websites where journalists could find materials directly) became standard. Email pitched directly to individual journalists replaced the broadcast fax blast for targeted media outreach. For practitioners, email created a new problem alongside its convenience: the inbox gatekeeping it. A journalist who could delete many pitches in five minutes became harder to reach than one who had to physically discard fax pages. The World Wide Web also meant that every press release was now potentially indexed by search engines and read by publics, not just journalists. The media landscape began fragmenting: bloggers started covering technology companies by 2001; Gawker launched in 2003; the PR function of reaching "the media" became more complex as the definition of "media" widened.

  • Social media platforms (Twitter 2006, Facebook Pages 2007, YouTube earned media) and media monitoring

    Twitter launched in July 2006 and within three years had become the most consequential new communications channel in modern PR history. For the first time, news broke on social platforms before traditional media reported it, executives could be held directly accountable in public without a journalist as intermediary, and crises could escalate from tweet to front page in under an hour. The Barack Obama presidential campaign's use of social media in 2008 demonstrated what coordinated social communications could achieve at scale and shifted PR attention firmly toward digital channels. Simultaneously, social media monitoring tools (Radian6, launched 2006; Brandwatch, launched 2007) made real-time brand sentiment tracking possible for the first time. A PR specialist in 2010 had access to keyword alert systems that would have required a full listening team a decade earlier. The social era also fragmented audience attention in ways that made traditional media placements less powerful as standalone tactics, pushing PR toward integrated programs that combined earned media, social amplification, and owned content.

    Effect on the work

    Social media monitoring tools partially automated the brand tracking function that had previously required manual news clipping or media monitoring subscriptions. The overall effect on employment was expansionary rather than contracting: more channels required more management, and the 2010s saw PR employment grow steadily.

  • AI-powered media monitoring, media database targeting (Muck Rack, Cision, Meltwater AI)

    The first wave of AI in PR arrived in media monitoring and media list targeting. Cision (which acquired PR Newswire for $841 million in 2016) and Meltwater embedded machine learning into coverage tracking and sentiment scoring, replacing keyword-alert systems with models that could classify tone and identify relevance. Muck Rack, founded in 2009, had by 2020 built the most comprehensive database of journalist contacts indexed to their recent coverage, enabling AI-assisted media list building. For practitioners, these tools reduced the time spent on list maintenance and clipping services, freeing capacity for relationship-building and strategic work. By 2022, virtually every major PR platform had an AI component, though the work of pitching, relationship management, and crisis response remained clearly human.

  • Generative AI writing, agentic pitching, and GEO visibility tools (Jasper, Prowly, Muck Rack Media List Agent)

    Generative AI entered PR practice rapidly and broadly after ChatGPT's launch in November 2022. By March 2026, a majority of PR practitioners reported using AI tools regularly according to PRSA surveys; Muck Rack's 2026 State of AI in PR report found 76% using generative AI daily for drafting, research, or measurement. Jasper's Press Release Agent reduced first-draft time; Prowly auto-generated monthly coverage reports saving several hours per cycle; Muck Rack's Media List Agent (launched February 2026) used AI to recommend journalists based on pitch content and recent coverage. Meltwater's Mira (May 2025) functioned as an in-platform AI teammate capable of monitoring hundreds of thousands of global news sources and generating pitch personalization. A new task appeared on the horizon: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the practice of improving a brand's presence in AI-generated search summaries from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, which required applying traditional earned-media principles to a new set of distribution mechanisms. The overall trajectory mirrors earlier technology cycles: more tools, more channels, augmented practitioners rather than replaced ones.

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Public Relations Specialists employment and pay by year

On record since1900
Latest US employment283,380 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$74,750 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+1.8% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 26 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
196019,000$6,800Est., Public Relations Society of America (employment) Researched contextEst., University of Missouri Libraries (pay) Researched contextReport
198055,000n/aEst., Wikipedia Researched contextReport
2000137,000$39,580Est., Bureau of Labor Statistics (employment) Researched contextBLS OEWS 2000 (pay) Official statisticReport
2003147,970$42,590BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004166,210$43,830BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005191,430$45,020BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006209,560$47,350BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007225,880$49,800BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008240,610$51,280BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
2009242,670$51,960BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
2010225,590$52,090BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
2011212,510$53,190BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
2012201,280$54,170BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
2013202,530$54,940BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
2014208,030$55,680BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
2015218,910$56,770BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
2016226,940$58,020BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
2017233,730$59,300BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018239,030$60,000BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
2019244,730$61,150BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020244,550$62,810BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021242,710$62,800BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022264,750$67,440BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023275,550$66,750BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024280,590$69,780BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025283,380$74,750BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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