If you had to guess the top city for entertainment, media and PR jobs, your first thought would probably be Los Angeles. And you’d be right. But there are also many opportunities beyond Southern California.
To find the best cities for these positions, apartment listings site Abodo considered three criteria: how many of a city’s total jobs are in one of the three industries, the median salaries for those positions and rent prices. The concentration of jobs accounted for 75% of the ranking. The relationship between salaries and rents made up the other 25%, and cities with high salaries but low rents performed well here. Abodo used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and from its own apartment listings. For city-level details, click here.
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To see the best cities for entertainment, media and PR jobs, open the gallery below.
Los Angeles ranked first. The city has a heavier concentration of entertainment, media and PR jobs than any other metro area. And what types of entertainment jobs can you find in L.A.? Disney is currently looking for a manager of its Disney Channel Original Movies, which involves overseeing casting and coming up with new ideas for children’s films. Other companies with many entertainment industry openings are Warner Bros., NBC Universal, Sony Pictures and Netflix, according to job ads on LinkedIn and Indeed. Los Angeles has an income-to-rent ratio of three-to-one, so your dollar goes further there compared with New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
New York came in second place and had the second-highest concentration of positions in media, entertainment and public relations. In PR, there are generally two tracks: you can work in-house and help manage an organization’s reputation or work at a PR agency that serves clients. A search on Indeed shows that Ogilvy, a top PR and advertising agency, is actively hiring. Michael Page—one of the largest recruiting firms in the U.S.—and Columbia University are also looking for new talent. In entertainment, CBS and Time, Inc. are recruiting for a variety of jobs ranging from TV producers to magazine photo editors.
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Washington D.C., ranked third, San Francisco came in fourth and Detroit took fifth place on Abodo’s list. Although the motor city has half as many media, entertainment and PR jobs per every 1,000 positions compared with San Francisco, Detroit has an attractive income-to-wage ratio of seven-to-one, helping it achieve a high ranking. Harman, a Samsung subsidiary that makes electronics for car companies and consumers, is a big employer in Detroit. It’s recruiting for roles like transducer engineers who can help design loudspeakers. Appliance and electronics manufacturer LG is also looking for talent in Detroit, including a mechanical engineer who will help develop the infotainment systems it builds for cars.
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