For the second year in a row, the annual survey of the job market for graduates of university PR programs shows that salaries for entry-level PR jobs have risen --going from $21,000 to $22,000.
The number of PR graduates finding jobs specifically in PR, however has re- mained flat, according to a report released earlier this month at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in Los Angeles.
"The encouraging thing is that the salaries went up again for the second year in a row," said Lee Becker, an associate professor at the School of Journalism at Ohio State University, Columbus, who is a co-author of the report.
The annual report evaluates the job-finding success of students receiving bachelor's degrees the previous year -- in this case, 1995 graduates. It is based on mailed responses received from about 2,300 bachelor's degree recipients, and 178 master's degree recipients of programs in journalism, mass communication, public relations and advertising.
Only about 50 percent of PR graduates, however, are taking jobs specifically in public relations or communications; 18 percent are taking jobs in public relations, while another 33 percent took jobs in other communication areas. These percentages essentially have remained the same for the past three or four years.
While many journalists later turn to public relations for a career, few journalism graduates apparently opt for PR initially. Only 3.9 percent of responding journalism graduates reported taking positions in public relations in the Ohio State study. Among other reasons, this may be due to the relatively low pay for entry-level PR positions, as reported in this study (see chart). While pay for mid-and high-level PR positions typically far outstrip the compensation for all but a few positions in journalism, this study finds that entry-level PR pay is better than that for most --but not all --categories of journalism: PR median weekly pay is tied with that for daily news-papers ($423), and is noticeably lower than that for newsletters ($469).
Pay for graduates with a journalism, advertising or PR major with a master's degree was markedly higher than that for those with a bachelor's degree. While the study did not break out the salaries of master's graduates by job type, overall, respondents reported a median annual salary of $28,500, compared to the overall median of $20,800.
According to Becker, this disparity probably is due at least in part to the fact that many master's graduates had previous full-time work experience before they acquired a master's degree. (AEJMC, 803/777-2005; Becker/Ohio State, 614/292-0255)