Vocational Index

Career

Marketing managers

Decide what a company sells, to whom, and how it tells the story.

$166,790
Median pay
+6.9%
Job growth, 2025–35
34,000
Openings a year
Bachelor's degree
Typical education
4 years
Typical time after high school

Here's what you actually need to know.

The work

What people in this job do

  • Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.
  • Use sales forecasting or strategic planning to ensure the sale and profitability of products, lines, or services, analyzing business developments and monitoring market trends.
  • Identify, develop, or evaluate marketing strategy, based on knowledge of establishment objectives, market characteristics, and cost and markup factors.
  • Direct the hiring, training, or performance evaluations of marketing or sales staff and oversee their daily activities.
  • Evaluate the financial aspects of product development, such as budgets, expenditures, research and development appropriations, or return-on-investment and profit-loss projections.

The outlook

How the forecast changed this year

2024–34 edition+6.6%2025–35 edition+6.9%
Projected 10-year growth in last year's and this year's BLS projections. 34,300 → 34,000 openings a year.

The deeper question

What kind of person does this path ask you to become?

What this work centers on

Persuasion & leadership
7.0
Information & systems
4.7
Ideas & analysis
2.9
People & care
2.8
Creation & expression
2.5
Objects & tools
1.0

O*NET interest profile, scored 1–7.

The work

Do you want most of your days spent on persuasion & leadership, then information & systems?

Responsibility

Are you willing to be the one responsible for this?

“Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.”

Development

What would you need to build over the next 5–10 years?

Active Listening, Speaking, Reading Comprehension, Complex Problem Solving.

Trade-offs

What does it ask of you in exchange?

4 years of education after high school (bachelor's degree), for a median of $166,790 a year and 34,000 openings nationally each year.

Paths in

Degrees that lead here

  • MarketingSee the degree →
  • Consumer Merchandising/Retailing ManagementCIP 19.0203
  • Apparel and Textile Marketing ManagementCIP 19.0905
  • Pharmaceutical Marketing and ManagementCIP 51.2011
  • Marketing/Marketing Management, GeneralCIP 52.1401
  • Marketing ResearchCIP 52.1402

Paths across

Careers that use similar skills

Ask anything about this career.

“Would this make sense if I don't want to sit at a desk all day?” Answers will come from the sources on this page, with citations. Coming soon.

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Sources

  1. BLS Employment Projections, 2025–35, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved 2026-10-01.
  2. BLS Employment Projections, 2024–34 (archived), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved 2026-10-01.
  3. O*NET 31.0 Database (August 2026), National Center for O*NET Development / U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved 2026-10-01.
  4. CIP 2020 to SOC 2018 Crosswalk, NCES and BLS. Retrieved 2026-10-01.