What Can You Do With a Communications Degree? 10 High-Paying Careers
TL;DR
• A communications degree leads to careers in marketing, public relations, corporate communications, content strategy, HR, market research, and revenue enablement — employers hire for writing clarity, audience understanding, and decision influence, not the degree title itself.
• Entry-level communications roles typically start between $45K–$65K. Mid-career professionals earn $75K–$130K, and senior/director-level roles regularly reach $120K–$180K+.
• The highest-paying communications careers — product marketing, sales enablement, and corporate communications — correlate directly with revenue impact and executive proximity.
• A bachelor's degree plus real experience is usually enough. Graduate school only makes sense when it unlocks specific roles, credentials, or networks.
• Building proof of work through Externships, portfolio artifacts, and applied projects is what actually gets you hired — not just the credential.
Want to start building real experience now? Explore Extern's project-based Externships →
What Can You Do With a Communications Degree?
A communications degree is a skills-first degree, not a job title degree. It trains you to explain value clearly, influence decisions with evidence, align stakeholders across teams, and turn messy information into something a leader can actually act on.
So where does that take you? Marketing and product marketing. Public relations and corporate comms. Content and SEO strategy. Customer insights and market research. HR and people operations. Business development and revenue enablement. The range is genuinely wide.
Here's the thing employers won't tell you outright: they don't care about the major name on your diploma. They care whether you can write clearly, synthesize research fast, present a recommendation without rambling, and shift your messaging when the audience changes. The degree gets your foot in. Your experience is what keeps you there.
If you're still weighing options, our guide to liberal arts degree jobs covers another flexible path worth looking at.
Communications Degree Types (And Whether You Need Grad School)
This is one of the most expensive decisions you'll make early in your career. Getting it wrong costs you years and a lot of money. Here's what the data actually shows.
Bachelor's Is Usually Enough — Real Experience Matters More Than Degree Level
Most entry-level communications roles need a bachelor's degree and real experience. That's it. Recruiters look at writing samples, presentations, research briefs, and campaign results long before they ask about graduate coursework.
A student with a bachelor's and two strong portfolio pieces regularly beats a master's grad who has no applied work to show. A messaging framework you built, a press pitch you wrote, a content audit you ran, a research summary that shaped a recommendation. These artifacts prove readiness in ways transcripts never will. Not sure what to include? Our student portfolio examples guide has templates to get you started.
When a Master's Is Worth It (And When It's Not)
Grad school makes sense when it unlocks something specific. Specialized research roles. A leadership track. A strong alumni network in a city you want to work in.
It usually isn't worth it if the goal is just feeling more qualified. If employers already want experience, adding a master's without applied projects doesn't fix that gap. You're better off investing that time into building a portfolio and doing real work.
Key Skills Communications Majors Learn (That Employers Pay For)
Communications majors pick up skills that show up across high-paying roles because every modern team needs someone who can write clearly, align people, and move decisions forward. Employers pay well for these skills when they're visible and tied to actual results.
Writing and editing for clarity. That means turning complicated ideas into messages people act on, not just read. Public speaking and presentations, where you're structuring arguments and guiding conversations with people who outrank you. Stakeholder communication, which is really about reading the room and adjusting your framing depending on who's listening. Research and synthesis. Persuasion and storytelling. Digital and social fluency across platforms.
Look, AI tools can speed up the early parts of this work. First drafts, background research, data summaries. But the value is still in your judgment, your accuracy, and your ability to shape a narrative that actually lands. Recruiters want to see how you use tools inside a real workflow, not whether you can list them on a resume. For more on framing these abilities, check our guide on skills to put on your resume.
10 High-Paying Careers With a Communications Degree
These roles attract communications majors because they sit close to decision-making, customer understanding, and revenue. The pay grows as you move from executing tasks to owning strategy and influencing outcomes across teams.
Product Marketing Manager
Product marketing is where messaging meets customer insight meets launch storytelling. You're translating what a product does into why someone should care, owning the positioning, and coordinating across teams who all think their priorities should come first.
Associate and coordinator roles start around $65K–$80K. Mid-career PMMs earn $95K–$130K, and senior or director-level positions hit $140K–$180K. The way in? Build launch briefs, customer personas, and competitive messaging docs. Once you own strategy, the ceiling gets high fast.
Social Media Strategist or Manager
This is channel strategy, content systems, and performance learning. Not just posting. The people who get paid well in social media are the ones who can connect what they publish to actual brand or revenue outcomes.
Entry-level sits at $45K–$55K. Mid-career roles reach $65K–$85K, and senior leadership positions get to $90K–$120K. Content calendars, analytics summaries, audience insights tied to real decisions. That's what separates a $50K social role from a $100K one.
Brand Strategist
Brand strategy is research meets storytelling. You're analyzing audience data, cultural signals, and competitive landscapes, then turning all of that into guidance that shapes how people perceive a company.
$55K–$70K at entry level, $80K–$110K mid-career, $120K–$150K senior. Show brand audits, insight summaries, and narrative frameworks that actually influenced a campaign or positioning decision.
Customer Insights or Market Research Analyst
Job titles can be misleading here. Many insights roles need communication just as much as analytics. You're taking messy data and turning it into clear recommendations that someone in a meeting can actually use.
Salaries start at $50K–$65K, grow to $70K–$90K mid-career, and hit $100K–$130K at senior levels. Survey summaries, interview syntheses, and insight decks that led to real decisions. That's the proof that gets you hired and promoted.
Human Resources and People Operations
HR is communication at scale. Policy writing, training materials, recruiting messaging, employee experience design. All of it depends on clarity and trust-building, and bad communication in HR can damage an entire organization's culture.
HR coordinators start around $45K–$55K. Mid-career professionals earn $65K–$85K. Senior HR managers reach $90K–$120K. The growth comes from owning programs and internal communications that directly affect retention and performance numbers.
Business Development and Sales
Honestly, if persuasion, relationship-building, and narrative clarity come naturally to you, BD and sales might be the strongest earning path of any communications career.
Base salaries start at $50K–$65K plus commission. Mid-career reaches $80K–$120K. And at senior levels, where you own revenue relationships and strategic accounts, total comp can exceed $120K–$200K+. Don't write off sales because of the title. It's problem-solving conversations, not cold calling scripts.
Public Relations Manager
PR is narrative control, media relationships, and crisis communication. It demands judgment under pressure and writing that works for journalists, executives, and public audiences at the same time. No small ask.
Entry-level specialists earn $50K–$70K, mid-career managers make $75K–$100K, senior directors reach $130K–$160K. Start as a coordinator. Build press materials, pitch examples, and coverage summaries tied to objectives you can name.
Content Strategist (Content and SEO)
The high-paying content roles are strategy-heavy. Audience research, content architecture, and tying everything back to business goals. This is not writing blog posts for fun. It's building content systems that drive measurable outcomes.
$55K–$70K at entry level, $75K–$95K mid-career, $100K–$130K senior. Content briefs, audits, performance analyses, and editorial frameworks. These show strategic thinking, which is what separates a content writer from a content strategist on a salary band.
Corporate Communications Manager
Corporate comms supports executives and internal stakeholders. It requires precision, discretion, and the ability to align teams who often don't agree with each other. You're frequently the bridge between what leadership decides and what the rest of the company hears.
$60K–$80K to start, $90K–$120K mid-career, $130K–$160K at the director level. Executive-ready writing, internal announcements, and stakeholder messaging artifacts set you apart.
Revenue Enablement or Sales Enablement Manager
Revenue enablement turns product value into messaging, playbooks, and training that makes sales teams close more deals. This is communication that drives revenue directly, and companies pay accordingly.
Starting salaries sit at $70K–$90K. Mid-career hits $100K–$130K. Senior leaders reach $140K–$180K. Build enablement decks, messaging guides, and training materials tied to measurable outcomes. The pay reflects a direct line between your work and the company's bottom line.
Salary data sourced from BLS (May 2024), Glassdoor, PayScale, ZipRecruiter, and Built In (Jan 2026).
Explore Externships in marketing, content, and business development →
How to Get Experience (Even If You Don't Have an Internship Yet)
Experience doesn't require a traditional pipeline. Recruiters trust proof of work that mirrors how teams actually operate day to day. The goal isn't perfection. It's credibility through visible work. If you're wondering why entry-level jobs require experience in the first place, we break that down separately.
Build Proof of Work With a Project-Based Externship
Project-based experience has become more common as companies look for faster, lower-risk ways to evaluate talent. An Externship is a structured, short-term, project-based experience where you work on real business problems and produce concrete deliverables, not a vague shadowing program.
For communications majors, that usually means building messaging frameworks, research briefs, campaign plans, or stakeholder materials that look like what real teams actually produce. Externships work especially well for early-career candidates because they emphasize what you delivered over where you went to school. When you list an Externship alongside personal or academic projects, it shows progression. It signals you can apply skills in a real context, take feedback, and improve.
You also get professional mentorship and guided support throughout, which makes translating the experience into resume-ready artifacts a lot easier.
Turn Classwork, Campus Roles, and Personal Projects Into Resume-Ready Outcomes
Most of the work communications majors already do is closer to professional output than they realize. A research paper is a research synthesis. A class presentation is a stakeholder deck. Running a student org means you coordinated messaging and managed audiences.
The shift is framing, not reinvention. Rewrite your bullets using action, outcome, and a metric or proxy. Even estimated impact beats vague responsibility statements. If you need help structuring this, our resume-with-no-experience guide walks through the exact format.
Build a Simple Communications Portfolio (Even Without Design Skills)
A strong communications portfolio is about thinking, not polish. Most recruiters need three to five artifacts to understand how you work. A writing sample. A campaign teardown. A press release with a pitch angle. A research summary. A slide deck explaining a recommendation.
Each artifact should include brief context, your role, and what decision it supported. Notion pages work well and are easy to update. Google Drive folders are fine for sharing PDFs. Clarity beats aesthetics every time.
FAQ: Communications Degree Jobs and Careers
What Jobs Can You Get With a Communications Degree Right After Graduation?
Common entry roles include coordinator, associate, or specialist titles across marketing, PR, HR, content, and insights teams. These roles focus on execution and support, then ladder into manager-level positions within 12 to 24 months as you demonstrate ownership, judgment, and measurable impact.
What Are the Highest-Paying Communications Careers?
Higher pay correlates with strategy scope, leadership responsibility, and proximity to revenue or executive decision-making. Product marketing, revenue enablement, brand strategy, and corporate communications consistently offer the strongest long-term compensation growth, with senior roles exceeding $140K–$180K.
Is a Communications Degree Worth It?
It is worth it when you treat communications as a skills degree and consistently build proof of work. The credential alone does not guarantee outcomes. Visible, applied experience — through Externships, portfolio projects, and real deliverables — is what drives interviews and offers.
Do You Need a Master's in Communications to Get a Good Job?
Usually no. Most hiring decisions hinge on experience, portfolio quality, and demonstrated business impact. Graduate school is only valuable when it unlocks specific roles, credentials, or networks you cannot access otherwise. For most communications careers, a bachelor's plus real experience is the faster path.
How Do You Stand Out as a Communications Major in the AI Era?
Use AI to speed up research and early drafts, then apply human judgment, accuracy checks, and audience awareness to everything you produce. Recruiters care about deliverables, decisions, and outcomes — not tool lists. Show that you can use AI within a workflow while maintaining quality, accuracy, and strategic thinking.
Ready to build real experience that employers trust? Explore Extern's project-based Externships — structured, short-term professional experiences with guided support and real deliverables. No prior experience required.
