$alaries in the City

New York magazine on what people make in the Big Apple. Doctors, financiers, escorts, drivers, editors, cops, attorneys, etc. If the figures are correct for PR/Communications people, we are overpaying at the university ...

NYmag: ... It was in the spirit of this financial glasnost that we began an exhaustive survey of New York's most important professions. We studied doctors, dog walkers, bankers, baristas, headhunters, advertising honchos, prostitutes -- just about anyone who does anything in this town to make a buck. And surprisingly, most of them -- in the strictest of confidence, of course -- spilled the beans. ...

... P.R. maven Lizzie Grubman presides over a staff of 30 and says she gets 100 résumés a week from aspiring public-relations professionals. That's about all you need to know to understand why P.R. starting salaries seldom get over the $30,000 hurdle. Young P.R. people often find themselves where the action is -- but they're definitely not getting rich. "Public relations is just not a tremendous moneymaker," Grubman says. "You have to own the business to make money." Needless to say, Grubman, who's 29 years old, owns the business.

Before you set up your own shop, however, you'll want to score a few clients in an established firm. Win an account and you'll move up to be an account executive. If you're successful, you'll manage people and be a senior AE making $45,000 to $55,000. After five years, you'd start looking to be made a VP in a smaller agency or an account supervisor in a larger one. In either place, you'd bring home $75,000 to $100,000.

Some P.R. professionals end the infighting and maneuvering that come with the territory at certain agencies by going to corporations that regularly hire media specialists. Someone doing marketing communications at a big company, for a salary in the neighborhood of $60,000, has more control over the strategy. "You may still pick up the phone for the press calls," says Bill Heyman, a P.R. and corporate-communications recruiter, "but you'll also be putting together the press plan." ...