What can you do with an advertising and public relations degree?
Where advertising and public relations graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 13,294 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Advertising and public relations is a degree that leads mostly to marketing work, and less often to public relations itself. About 5 in 100 people with this bachelor's degree work as marketing managers and about 4 in 100 as market research analysts. Only about 2.2 in 100 are public relations specialists. Together those three jobs hold roughly 11 in 100 graduates.
Smaller groups work as customer service representatives at about 2.8 in 100, management analysts at about 1.6 in 100, writers and authors at about 1.5 in 100 and graphic designers at about 1.2 in 100. Elementary and middle school teachers account for about 2.3 in 100.
Nearly half, about 48 in 100, work in roles we do not score. The largest are managers in other roles at about 6 in 100, chief executives and legislators at about 2. 5 in 100, human resources workers at about 2. 2 in 100 and retail supervisors at about 2 in 100. Advertising and promotions managers, at about 1. 5 in 100, are not mapped to a page.
This page covers about 52% of graduates, close to our 50% minimum, so read the exposure figure as a description of the scored jobs only. It rests on Census data on more than 13,000 people with this degree.
How exposed are advertising and public relations jobs to AI?
No single verdict fits yet. About 64 in 100 of the graduates in jobs we score work in jobs we rate At risk, led by marketing managers (structural exposure 91 out of 100), market research analysts (92) and public relations specialists (97). That is below the 70% our rule needs for an At risk label, and we score only 52% of graduates, so we do not give one.
Another 23 in 100 work in AI-resistant despite the paperwork jobs such as lawyers and elementary teachers, and 13 in 100 in Safe jobs.
BLS projects 2% growth for public relations specialists from 2025 to 2035 and notes that AI is making inroads into data-rich social media, which may soften demand for these workers. The scored jobs together have a share-weighted projected growth of 3.9%. At risk describes how exposed the jobs are, not what has happened to these graduates, and the studies we reviewed do not show a clear AI effect on this field. Confidence is insufficient.
These figures cover the 52% of advertising and public relations graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 48% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Other Managers; Chief Executives and Legislators; Human Resources Workers). Signal 01 averages each job's own structural exposure, weighted by how many graduates work there; it describes tasks, not whether jobs will disappear.
Where advertising and public relations graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 30% of advertising and public relations graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
What the research says about AI and advertising and public relations graduates
The Census Bureau working paper (CES 26-56, September 2026, not yet through the Bureau's publication review) lists advertising and public relations in its appendix table, in the second most exposed tenth of majors. It gives the field a 2024 employment estimate about 3 percentage points below the average major's change since 2022 and an earnings estimate about 6% below the average.
The paper does not discuss this field in its text, and it finds the negative changes concentrated in the most exposed tenth, which it describes as largely computer science, information systems and other software-related degrees, so one major's estimate should not be read as an AI effect.
The Dallas Fed paper covers Texas public universities only and does not name this field. The NBER paper's abstract reports that recent-graduate unemployment did not spike in summer 2026 and does not name any field, and Employ America (July 2025) does not discuss it. The studies disagree about how much of any graduate weakness is due to AI, and none of them tests jobs such as public relations specialists.
Read the full evidence review: what the studies say about AI and graduate jobs →
Degrees whose graduates work in similar jobs
How this page was built
Graduate shares come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS), field of degree "Advertising And Public Relations" (code 1904), weighted to the population. Each occupation we cover is scored with the numbers already published on its own page on this site, then averaged by graduate share. Occupations without a page are shown but never scored. Graduates aged 22-64 are included, so the mix reflects the whole working-age group, not only recent graduates. The survey records the most recent occupation of people who were not working when surveyed (unemployed or out of the labor force), and they are counted in it: across the degrees on this site that is about 9 in 100 graduates, between 6 and 13 in 100 depending on the degree, so "work as" on this page means "work or last worked as". Sources: www2.census.gov, www2.census.gov, www.dallasfed.org, www.nber.org, employamerica.org, www.bls.gov, www.bls.gov. This page is general information, not career or educational advice.