How many marketing managers are there in the US, and who are they?

There were about 421,600 marketing manager jobs in the US in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. Ask people instead of employers and the number is larger: in the BLS household survey, 669,000 employed people described their job as marketing manager in 2025. Both figures are official. They count different things, so it is worth knowing which one you are using.

Why are there two different counts?

The 421,600 figure is the BLS estimate of jobs, the base for its ten-year projections. The 669,000 comes from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of households, where people describe their own main job and the survey codes it to a detailed occupation. The two are built from different sources, and neither is wrong. If you are sizing a market of buyers, the household count is closer to "people who would recognise themselves in your ad". If you are comparing pay or growth across occupations, the jobs estimate is the one the BLS builds its tables on.

Advertising and promotions managers are a separate, much smaller occupation: 61,000 employed people in the same household survey.

Who are marketing managers?

The household survey publishes sex, race, ethnicity and age for each occupation, and the same figures for the US workforce as a whole: everyone aged 16 and over who had a job in 2025, about 163.5 million people. Setting the two side by side shows how marketing managers differ from the average worker.

• Sex. 59.4% of marketing managers were women. Across the whole workforce, 47.1% of workers were women, so the job leans more female than work in general.
• Age. Their median age was 38.9, against 42.1 for all workers. About 220,000 were aged 25 to 34 and about 214,000 were aged 35 to 44. No other age group came close.
• Race and ethnicity. 80.0% of marketing managers were White, against 75.7% of all workers. 9.9% were Asian, against 7.5% of all workers. 5.7% were Black or African American, against 12.7%. 11.5% were Hispanic or Latino, against 20.0%.

The age table and the race and sex table are published side by side, and the same tables cover hundreds of other occupations. For another audience profile built the same way, from published government figures only, see how many CEOs there are in the US and who they are.

Where do marketing managers work, and what do they earn?

The Occupational Outlook Handbook lists the largest employers of marketing managers in 2025 as professional, scientific and technical services (23%), management of companies and enterprises (12%), and finance and insurance, information, and wholesale trade (10% each).

The median annual wage for marketing managers was $166,790 in May 2025. The lowest-paid 10% earned less than $90,260 and the highest-paid 10% more than $293,610. Of the five largest employing industries, information paid the highest median, $192,600, and wholesale trade the lowest, $165,630. A bachelor's degree is the typical entry-level education for the wider group of advertising, promotions and marketing managers.

The BLS projects marketing manager employment to grow from 421,600 in 2025 to 450,800 in 2035, a rise of 7% or 29,100 jobs, because organisations will keep using marketing campaigns to hold and grow their market share. How the BLS produces these series, and how to read them, is covered in our guide to US jobs data in 2026.

What does this mean if you sell to marketing managers?

1. Pick the count that matches the question. For "how many people might buy this", start from the household figure. For "how fast is this role growing", use the jobs estimate. Say which one a plan rests on.
2. Picture the buyer accurately. The typical marketing manager is younger than the average worker and more likely to be a woman. A campaign built on a default picture of "a manager" will miss part of the audience.
3. Follow the industries. The five largest employing industries are professional services, head offices, finance, information and wholesale. Industry events and trade media in those sectors reach more of them than general marketing channels alone.
4. Expect a well-paid, budget-holding buyer. A median wage above $160,000 says something about seniority and about the decisions these people sign off.

Where the numbers have limits

Every figure here is an estimate from a sample survey and carries a margin of error, and small groups in the race and age breakdowns carry wider ones. The 2025 household survey averages cover 11 months, because October 2025 data were not collected during the federal government shutdown. The jobs estimate and the household count are built differently, so the shares from one should not be applied to the total from the other. The figures are national. Nothing here says how marketing managers are spread across states or cities, and a regional plan should start from local figures rather than the national profile.

Cambium AI builds synthetic populations from verified US public data like this, with the source behind each figure open to check, so a team can test who it is planning for before a budget is committed. If marketing managers are your audience, Cambium AI's marketing pilot is a way to test the audience and the message first.

Data sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers (2025 employment, May 2025 wages, 2025 to 2035 projections); Current Population Survey, 2025 annual averages, tables 11 and 11b.