Marketing manager salary in 2026: the spread and the industries

BLS puts the median annual wage for marketing managers at $166,790 as of May 2025 (Occupational Outlook Handbook, 11-2021). The middle is the least interesting part of that page. The same table says the lowest 10 percent of marketing managers earned less than $90,260 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $293,610 - a spread wide enough that the median tells you very little about the offer in front of you. This post is about what moves a person up that range, and about why the by-city table you came looking for is no longer on a page anyone can cite.

What is the median marketing manager salary in 2026?

Marketing managers, national wage estimates, May 2025

$90,260Lowest 10 percent earned less than

$166,790Median annual wage

$293,610Highest 10 percent earned more than

How to read this. The median is the middle of the occupation, not its average: half of marketing managers earned more than $166,790 in the May 2025 estimate and half earned less. O*NET lists the same annual figure for 11-2021.00 alongside a median hourly wage of $80.19, both labelled 2025, and the hourly one is that annual number divided out rather than a rate anyone in this job is actually paid.

What the number is not is a description of a person. It is a wage estimate for one occupation code, nationally, for a single reference period. It does not separate a Marketing Manager three years into the title from one fifteen years in, because BLS publishes no experience breakdown for this occupation at all. The percentile spread is the closest thing to one, and it folds seniority, industry, employer size and geography into a single column - which is why $90,260 and $293,610 are both, correctly, marketing managers.

Why there is no salary by city in this post

Because BLS stopped serving one as a page. The per-occupation page under the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program - bls.gov/oes/current/oes112021.htm, which used to carry the state and metropolitan tables for this code - now resolves to an index of downloadable OEWS table files rather than an occupation page with numbers on it. The May 2025 occupation profile that replaced it is an interactive tool at data.bls.gov/oesprofile, which draws its numbers in the browser and leaves no text on the page to quote.

The metro estimates themselves are still public, and it is worth knowing exactly where, because that is the only way to check a city claim for free. They sit in the May 2025 "Metropolitan and nonmetropolitan area" release on BLS's OEWS tables page, and in the per-area pages beneath it - one page per metro listing every occupation, rather than one page per occupation listing every metro. So the data survived the redesign and the citation did not. A city figure offered to you without one of those files behind it is a vendor's model, not a federal estimate.

Here is the part you are allowed to disagree with. For a Marketing Manager deciding what to ask for, the industry you are applying into is a better anchor than the city you are applying from - and, unlike a city number, it is still on a page you can open and check in ten seconds. BLS's by-industry medians for this occupation span $165,630 to $192,600, all published, all dated May 2025. A cost-of-living multiplier applied to a national median by a salary site has no comparable page behind it, and you would be quoting it to someone who has the real band open on their screen.

Which industry pays marketing managers the most?

Median annual wage for marketing managers by industry, May 2025

The five industries BLS breaks out for this occupation. The occupation-wide median is $166,790.

Information		$192,600
Management of companies and enterprises		$172,580
Finance and insurance		$172,350
Professional, scientific, and technical services		$170,050
Wholesale trade		$165,630

Information - software, publishing, broadcasting, telecom - sits at the top with a median of $192,600. Wholesale trade sits at the bottom of the same five at $165,630, slightly under the occupation-wide median. Take two Marketing Manager postings that read almost identically: one at a software company, one at an industrial distributor. Same title, same three direct reports, same demand-generation brief. The published middle for those two employers' industries is more than twenty-five thousand dollars apart before anyone has negotiated anything.

The sibling title is a sharper version of the same point. Advertising and promotions managers - a separate BLS occupation, 33,200 jobs - had a median of $133,660 in May 2025, and their industry table runs the other way: wholesale trade pays them a median of $217,430, while advertising, public relations, and related services pays $133,550. The industry that pays marketing managers the least pays advertising managers the most. Titles do not carry a price. Payrolls do.

Two limits on that chart. Each bar is itself a median, so the information industry has its own bottom decile and it is not visible here. And five industries are not the whole economy: if you are a Marketing Manager in retail, health care, higher education or a nonprofit, your industry is not on the list, and the occupation-wide $166,790 is the closest published figure you have.

The occupations next to Marketing Manager, and what they pay

Every figure above is a May 2025 estimate from the Occupational Outlook Handbook pages listed in the sources, and the employment counts are 2025 estimates from the same pages.

O*NET lists the other four as occupations related to 11-2021.00, and the reason to read that table rather than skim it is the last row. Market research analysts is not a manager job, it is by far the largest pool on the page at 952,700, and its top decile stops at $155,480 - below the marketing manager median. The 952,700 is also broader than the row label suggests: the code behind it is 13-1161, market research analysts and marketing specialists, so it counts specialist and coordinator titles alongside research ones. Someone whose actual work is campaign analysis and segmentation can be hired into either code, and the ceiling differs by a wide margin depending on which one the requisition was written under. That is worth knowing before you accept a title.

O*NET also records the titles employers post against this code: Brand Manager, Product Manager, Marketing Director, Marketing Communications Manager, Market Development Manager. A search on the string "Marketing Manager" alone hides most of the market from you.

Where does a first marketing manager job land in that range?

Nowhere BLS will tell you. The Handbook publishes no entry-level wage for this occupation, and the 10th percentile is not a starting salary - it is the bottom tenth of everyone in the job, which includes long-tenured managers at small employers in the industries that pay least. The $90,260 figure is a floor for the occupation. It is not a first offer, and treating it as one will cost you.

What the page does say is that the route in is lateral rather than junior: BLS describes these managers as typically needing work experience in a related advertising, marketing, promotions, or sales occupation. So the person taking a first Marketing Manager title usually arrives from a specialist seat, not from a degree, and their previous pay plus the industry table above will shape the offer more than the occupation median ever does.

The analyst row from the table is the useful cross-check. Market research analysts, which O*NET lists among the occupations related to 11-2021.00, had a median of $78,760 and a top decile of $155,480 in May 2025. Somebody crossing from that code into 11-2021 is moving out of a distribution that ends at $155,480 and into one whose middle is $166,790. The step is real. It is also a step between two distributions, not a raise anyone is obliged to hand you, and the first employer to offer the manager title is rarely the one that pays the manager median.

Can I ask for the 90th percentile?

You can, and roughly one marketing manager in ten is above it, so it is not a fantasy number. But $293,610 is what the top of a 421,600-person occupation looks like, and it concentrates in the industries and employer sizes that pay it rather than spreading evenly across every Marketing Manager opening. Ask for it when you can name the industry median you are beating, and why.

What employers require before the title says manager

BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education for this occupation and adds, plainly, that these managers typically need work experience in a related advertising, marketing, promotions, or sales occupation. O*NET puts the code in Job Zone Four, considerable preparation needed. Its current summary for 11-2021.00 reports that among respondents working in the occupation, 56 percent named a bachelor's degree as the level required, 24 percent a master's, and 11 percent a professional degree.

Read that survey carefully before you enrol in anything. It records what people already in the job say is required, which is not the same as what the posting in front of you says, and it is not evidence that a master's raises pay here - BLS publishes no wage breakdown by degree for 11-2021, so that comparison cannot be made from public data at all. What the two sources agree on is the shape of the gate. The degree is close to universal, and the prior operating experience is the part that decides whether a Marketing Manager requisition will look at you.

Is the marketing manager job growing?

Yes, and faster than the occupation it is usually grouped with. BLS projects marketing managers to go from 421,600 jobs in 2025 to 450,800 in 2035, a 7 percent increase. Over the same decade it projects advertising and promotions managers to fall 4 percent, from 33,200 jobs to 31,900. One title adds roughly 29,100 positions while the one beside it sheds them, which is the clearest signal on the page about where the work is moving.

The openings figure needs a caveat that most write-ups drop. BLS projects about 36,300 openings a year over the decade, but that number is published for the combined advertising, promotions, and marketing managers group of 454,800 people, not for marketing managers alone, and most openings in any occupation come from workers leaving it rather than from growth. It is not a count of new marketing manager jobs and should not be quoted as one.

One more caution about vintages, because it will trip you up if you go and cross-check this post. O*NET currently shows a 2024–34 projection round for 11-2021.00, with a different employment base and a different openings count. Every projection here is from the 2025–35 round on the BLS page. The two rounds are not comparable, and setting one beside the other produces a change that never happened.

If you are applying for this role

Search the title variants, not the title. Brand Manager, Product Manager, Marketing Director, Marketing Communications Manager and Market Development Manager all sit under 11-2021.00 in O*NET's reported job titles. One search string is a search of a fraction of the postings.

Anchor to the industry first, then the range. If the employer is in information, the published median for marketing managers there is $192,600 (BLS, May 2025), and an ask in the $180,000s is inside the middle of that market rather than above it. If they are in wholesale trade, where the May 2025 median is $165,630, the same ask needs a reason attached. Treat $90,260 and $293,610 as the outer walls of the occupation, not as targets.

Ask one question on the phone screen: which band this requisition sits in, and how many levels the marketing ladder has above it. A Marketing Manager title at a 200-person software company and the same title at a Fortune 500 are two jobs on two different payrolls, and the answer tells you which of the industry medians above is the one that applies to you before you name a number.

Then apply to enough of them that a single range is not the whole decision. If retyping the same work history and salary expectation into every form is the thing that stops you, HeroApply fills those fields from your resume.