A bit of data extrapolation. Recent PR Week features say that the average PR agency director’s salary is £75,000 and senior agency folk work on average 59 hours a week. In which case, that means the average PR agency director earns around £26.50 per hour (this assumes they take 4 weeks holiday – which I suspect in some cases they don’t – so that would drop the rate slightly further). Of course, the £26.50 is before tax – a £75,000 salary of course attracts a tax rate of 40pc on everything above £34,000 (allowing for personal allowances, amount taxed at lower rate, etc) . So this could mean take home pay is actually below £20 per hour.
PR Week’s data would also suggest that if the average PR agency account exec is earning £19,800 and working 50.5 hours a week, then the average hourly rate is about £8 pre-tax). Post tax takes the figure closed to £6 per hour. Which may explain the lack of morale cited by PR Week – or why office cleaning offers a similar rate of pay for shorter hours.