Are marketing jobs really being cut

A net balance close to zero

Eleven mid-sized companies gave us access to their staff records between 2022 and 2026. Together they employ 418 people in marketing and communications roles. The net balance over the period is minus eleven posts, a fall of 2.6%.

On its own that figure says almost nothing. Over the same period, 96 people left and 85 arrived. The turnover is heavy, and it is in its composition that the transformation can be read.

What leaves and what arrives

Departures mostly involve production roles: content officer, marketing assistant, in-house designer. Arrivals involve coordination and measurement roles: data manager, project lead, compliance officer. The qualification level at hiring rises, average length of service falls.

Put another way, the companies in our sample have not shrunk their teams. They have replaced execution work with organisational work, which closes the usual way into the occupation without reducing the total number of ways in.

The limits of the sample

Eleven companies do not make a sector. They agreed to open their records to us, which probably makes them unrepresentative: a company making mass redundancies would not have replied. We treat these results as a starting point, not as a measure of the market.