EXPOSED
The written output layer of PR — press releases, media pitches, talking points, coverage summaries, sentiment reports, award submissions — is exactly what generative models do at usable quality, and much of a PR manager's week is reviewing and shipping that output. What survives is the part that isn't text: owning the call on whether to respond to a hostile story, standing in front of a reporter or CEO with your name on the advice, and the personal relationships with specific journalists and editors that determine whether a pitch is read. There is no license and no legal sign-off here, so the moat is reputation and accountability rather than regulation.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+5% 83,200 → 87,300 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +5% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~6,600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Campaign ManagerCommunity ManagerPublicity ManagerCommunity DirectorPublicity DirectorDevelopment DirectorInformation DirectorRelationship ManagerSocial Media ManagerCommunications ManagerCommunications DirectorPublic Affairs DirectorCustomer Service ManagerPublic Information DirectorCommunity Engagement ManagerCommunity Relations DirectorBusiness Development DirectorUniversity Relations DirectorMarketing Communications ManagerMarketing and Communications ManagerPublic Information Relations ManagerPublic Relations Manager (PR Manager)Public Relations Director (PR Director)Public Relations Supervisor (PR Supervisor)
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier A 9 reflects the split inside the job: drafting releases, media lists, pitch angles, coverage clips and monthly sentiment decks are now machine work, while brokering an embargo with a specific beat reporter, running a message-testing session with the exec team, and deciding what the company says at hour two of a crisis are not — so roughly half the calendar resists and half does not.
Some physical or field component A 5 covers the physical residue that is real but not the job: staffing press conferences, riding along on media tours, walking a camera crew through a plant, and being in the room for on-camera prep — none of it requires manual skill in an uncontrolled setting, but it does require a body in a specific place on a specific morning.
No licence, no signature requirement A 2 because nothing you issue carries a professional signature — no license to lose, no bar or board to answer to; PRSA's APR is voluntary and no employer requires it, and when a statement is legally consequential the securities lawyer or GC owns the exposure, not you.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls A 15 is earned by the calls with no playbook: respond or stay silent on a hostile investigation piece, when to disclose a breach ahead of legal deadline, whether to put the CEO on record, and how to handle a reporter who has half the story — these get made in hours, on incomplete facts, with the share price and executive careers as the downside.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (9/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (14/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (15/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 31 of this occupation's 45 points (69%).
Embodiment (5/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to public relations managers on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 61/100, still EXPOSED.
Routine tier (releases, pitch drafts, coverage/sentiment reports, award submissions) is absorbed by in-house genAI, leaving crisis sequencing, litigation-adjacent messaging, and regulator/reporter negotiation as the residual day. This is a genuine two-tier occupation and the surviving tier is the judgment tier — but headcount falls as the score rises.
Newsroom and platform policies that refuse or deprioritize unattributed AI-generated pitches — e.g. wire services and major outlets requiring a named human contact and verifiable prior relationship — makes the relationship itself the billable good rather than the copy.
SEC Reg FD and Rule 10b-5 exposure for material disclosures: if enforcement actions or exchange listing rules require a named human officer to attest that an earnings release or material 8-K-adjacent statement was reviewed by a person (as securities counsel already demands for disclosure controls under SOX 302), the IR/PR manager becomes a documented sign-off in the disclosure committee chain.
Crisis retainers written so a named individual, not the agency, is on-call for go/no-go calls during litigation, recall, or M&A windows — the pattern already used in D&O-insurer-approved crisis panels.
FTC Endorsement Guides and state AI-disclosure laws (e.g. California AB 2013 / EU AI Act transparency duties) creating an attributable-human requirement for synthetic spokesperson content and influencer campaigns, with the agency principal named on the certification.
The limit. Even with every lever, this stays a no-license occupation: the moat is reputation, which does not scale to the 74k headcount. The most likely path is a smaller, higher-scoring profession — senior counselors rise, the release-writing tier disappears.
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 9,470 | $195,190 +33% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 7,940 | $192,360 +31% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 3,610 | $163,830 +12% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,850 | $130,950 -11% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,190 | $133,210 -9% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,880 | $192,720 +31% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,810 | $176,390 +20% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 1,790 | $130,530 -11% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 980 | $213,510 +45% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 9,470 | $195,190 +33% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,880 | $192,720 +31% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 45. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.