Average salary for APAC corp comm and PR professionals was US $143,000 says report
The average annual salary for a corporate communications or public relations professional stood at US $143,000 (nearly S $194,000) for 2018 according to the State of the Industry Report for 2019 from PublicAffairsAsia and recruitment firm Prospect.
The numbers varied quite significantly across geographies with Australia topping the list of annual salaries at US $165,000 and South East Asia other than Singapore pegged at US $90,000
Men on an average stood to earn US $20,000 more than women.
In-house communications professionals embedded within corporates on an average fared better than those working with agencies. The average salary bonus for in-house was at 25% as opposed to 19% for those in agencies.
The base salaries for those working in-house also tended to be higher.
Only 7% of in-house communications professionals identified themselves as working in PR; the number was much higher at 47% for those in agencies.
Unsurprisingly, this meant only 3% of in-house corporate communications professionals considered moving to agencies.
On the other hand, 45% of those in agencies wanted to move to an in-house role and only 8% wanted to move to another agency.
The report was the result of a survey of over 420 frontline practitioners. Read the full report here.
Okay, so I read this article, and also the full report and I have major issues with the survey. Nowhere does it state what level the survey respondents are.
I mean, what does “average regional salary” even mean? A super senior PR/Comms professional with 15-20 years experience would skew the whole average if you also spoke to a junior or mid-level professionals with say, 2-5 years or 5-8 years experience respectively. And someone in Australia who typically are paid more wouldn’t even compare to someone in Indonesia who are paid nowhere even close to that.
The average salary level for SEA (excluding Singapore) is USD 90,000 which would be approximately RM 367,365 in Malaysia which works out to an average of RM30,000 monthly salary. Is it just me or does no one actually earn that much in Malaysia even amongst the quite senior folks in PR or Comms. And don’t get me started on what that average figure would mean in Indonesia or Bangkok.
Then you have Singapore’s average which works out to SGD 12,000 which sounds slightly more plausible, but then again, at what level are we talking about?
The only time age is remotely mentioned in the survey is when it does a comparison between in-house and agency practitioners’ salary increments.
The report does also mention that:
“This year we noted a big gap in the salaries of expats versus local
hires. Across the industry as a whole, expatriates earned an average of US$170,000 with local nationals working in their home country earning US$117,000 on average.”
So could the majority of survey respondents have been expats, and at the higher levels which would explain the skewed salary average?
I think it’s great that we have such a report focused solely on the PR/Comms industry as I personally do feel that other the similar-ish salary reports on Marketing/Comms professionals doesn’t adequately represent the industry either. But it can definitely be improved to address a real issue in the industry of salary imbalance between:
– Locals and expats
– Men and women
– PR/Comms and Marketing professionals
Cheers!
ReplyCorrection: Singapore average monthly salary is USD12,000 means it’s closer to SGD16,000. So not as plausible as I’d earlier thought unless you are an SVP or something.
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