Best States for Public Relations Managers: California Leads Overall, New York Tops Pay

Across the top-ranked states, the data show that strong markets for public relations managers do not all look the same. Some states combine higher salaries with larger employment counts, while others rank well with smaller employment bases but competitive pay and Geography Scores. The results also show that the state with the highest median salary is not the same as the state with the highest LaborCove Geography Score. That distinction highlights how the rankings reflect a combination of factors rather than salary alone.

At the national level, public relations managers report a median annual salary of $146,910. National employment in this occupation stands at 74,850. The supplied national projected employment growth for public relations managers is 5.0%. This projection applies to the occupation across the United States as a whole and is not a state-by-state or metro-level forecast. These national figures provide a baseline for evaluating how state-level salaries, employment counts, and Geography Scores compare, especially in the top-ranked states highlighted by LaborCove.

California holds the #1 state ranking for public relations managers in the LaborCove results, with a Geography Score of 82.89. New York ranks #2 with a Geography Score of 80.97. Within the rest of the top five, Colorado ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 63.31, Maine ranks #4 at 61.83, and Texas ranks #5 at 61.34. These scores show that California and New York sit noticeably ahead of the other listed states on this metric. Further down the top ten, New Jersey ranks #6 with a Geography Score of 60.61, Massachusetts ranks #7 at 59.95, Virginia ranks #8 at 59.92, Washington ranks #9 at 52.15, and Maryland ranks #10 at 47.83. Each Geography Score reflects LaborCove’s composite assessment rather than any single metric in isolation.

Several of the top-ranked states post median salaries for public relations managers above the national median of $146,910. New York’s median salary of $180,880, Virginia’s $176,340, New Jersey’s $174,980, and Massachusetts’s $171,740 each sit more than $20,000 above the national median. California’s median salary of $167,980 and Maine’s $166,940 are also above the national benchmark. Within the top ten, New York’s median salary of $180,880 is higher than the median salaries reported for California ($167,980), Colorado ($162,870), Maine ($166,940), Texas ($126,670), New Jersey ($174,980), Massachusetts ($171,740), Virginia ($176,340), Washington ($159,440), and Maryland ($149,380). Texas, at $126,670, reports a median salary below the national median. Washington’s median salary of $159,440 and Maryland’s $149,380 both exceed the national median of $146,910, while Texas’s $126,670 trails it. These comparisons show that every listed state except Texas has a median salary at or above the national figure in the supplied data.

Among the states in the top ten where employment data are supplied, California has the largest reported employment count for public relations managers at 9,400. Texas follows with 8,190, and New York reports 7,710. New Jersey reports an employment count of 2,420, Massachusetts 2,170, Virginia 2,610, Washington 1,610, and Maryland 1,530. Within this group, California’s employment count of 9,400 is higher than the counts supplied for New York, Texas, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, and Maryland. Employment counts identify how many public relations manager jobs are captured in the data for each state. They do not indicate the number of employers or the number of current job openings in those locations.

The top ten states illustrate that higher median salary does not always correspond to a higher LaborCove Geography Score. New York, with the highest listed median salary of $180,880, ranks #2 with a Geography Score of 80.97, while California, with a lower median salary of $167,980, ranks #1 with a Geography Score of 82.89. A similar pattern appears when comparing Texas and some smaller-employment states. Texas ranks #5 with a Geography Score of 61.34 and an employment count of 8,190. New Jersey, with a lower employment count of 2,420 and a higher median salary of $174,980, ranks just ahead of Massachusetts and Virginia despite all three having different mixes of salary, employment, and scores. These differences underscore that the LaborCove Geography Score reflects a composite of metrics rather than salary or employment alone, so states with different numerical profiles can occupy neighboring positions in the rankings.

LaborCove builds its state rankings for public relations managers using authoritative labor‑market data and the LaborCove Geography Score, which synthesizes multiple metrics into a single comparable value. For this article, national salary, employment, and projected employment growth figures describe the occupation of public relations managers (SOC 11-2032) at the national level. The underlying Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations refer to May 2025; the 2026 report year is the publication and product year, not the data‑collection date. All geographic results here are state-level and reflect the metrics explicitly supplied for each state: median annual salary, employment, and LaborCove Geography Score. Projected employment growth is available only as a national projection and is not applied to individual states. LaborCove rankings provide a structured comparison across locations, but individual decisions should also consider personal, professional, and non-labor‑market factors that are outside the scope of this data.