Leading brands post new marketing jobs across the U.S. every day. Despite the threat of a looming recession, there are still plenty of opportunities across the country.
The question is, which U.S. cities are the best for entry-level and senior marketing roles?
We combed through data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to learn which metro areas and locations offer the best wage brackets, career progression and more. Here are our findings.
Median marketing wage by metro area
Despite reports of many tech workers leaving San Francisco during the pandemic, it still offers a competitive salary for marketers. Indeed, four Californian cities appear in the top 10 for marketing wages, indicating it remains a prosperous state for marketing and growth talent to earn a living.
Here is a list of the top 10:
Battle Creek, MI
San Jose, CA
Atlantic City, NJ
San Francisco, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Vallejo, CA
New York City, NY
Seattle, WA
Trenton, NJ
California-Lexington Park, MD
For entry-level marketers, San Jose offers a competitive average salary – over $5,000 a year more than Trenton, which sits in second place. San Francisco and Napa follow suit, indicating that California offers generous opportunities for marketers getting their start in the industry.
However, it’s worth noting that the cost of living in San Francisco is 25.5% higher than San Jose (according to 2022 data compiled by Sperling’s Best Places).
San Jose sits at the top spot once again for mid-level marketing wages, offering over $12,000 a year more than the average salary in San Francisco.
Here, Santa Cruz takes the lead for senior-level marketing positions. This offers marketers who wish to remain on the West Coast a viable option if their salary goals are beyond $200k a year.
Despite San Jose and other Californian cities offering higher wages than other metro areas, none of these appear on our list of top locations based on pay progression.
This indicates that, while you can earn a great salary in California, there are still plenty of opportunities to climb the ladder across the rest of the country. Areas like Daytona Beach, Midland and Yuma offer ample remuneration with a lower cost of living.
Methodology
Using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, we took the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile salaries for 300-400 metros to get a sense of salary levels, pay progression and max pay potential.
We then extracted the number of people employed in marketing occupations in those areas to get a sense of the size of the industry/community in each city.
Finally, we looked back at the historical data to see how the number of marketers in these cities has changed over the years to get a sense of where sales is growing the most
