Half of digital marketers can't survive one month without a paycheck. These states give them the best odds

Half of digital marketers can't survive one month without a paycheck. These states give them the best odds

A 1,000-person survey of working digital marketers from search marketing company Page One Power exposes some uncomfortable facts for digital marketers. Although nearly 95% say they are satisfied with their career overall, more than 45% also say they couldn't cover a single month of bills if their income stopped tomorrow.

Along with the survey, the researchers also created a 50-state ranking to determine the best states based on how far a marketing salary goes. Below, Page One Power looks at the findings from the research and outlines which states give digital marketers the best odds to make their paycheck stretch.

How the numbers were built

In order to create the state-by-state ranking, called the Digital Marketing Professional Index, the researchers scored every state on four factors, each scaled 0 to 100 and then weighted.

To build out the weighted average, they first looked at Industry density, which counts for 40%. That's the share of all businesses in a state that are advertising, PR, and related firms, pulled from the Census Bureau's 2022 County Business Patterns data. Next, they weighed affordability, which counts for 35%, based on the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities for 2024. The last factor is tax advantage, which makes up 15%, from the Tax Foundation's 2026 state income tax rates.

The final 10%was sourced via Google Trends search interest; it's been weighted that low on purpose. Search volume tells you where people are typing "marketing manager salary" into a box, not where the jobs are. Plenty of "best states" rankings treat the two as the same thing, and that's where they go wrong. Here, search demand can nudge a state up or down a few spots, but it can't carry one to the top on its own.

The finding that gives everything else its weight

Based on the survey, 45.8% of respondents said they could not support themselves beyond four weeks if their paycheck disappeared. When we break that figure down, it gets even more interesting. 8.5% have less than a week of runway. 14.8% have one to two weeks. 22.5%have two to four. Only 15.1% have more than six months saved.

The widest gap in the entire survey runs along gender lines. Women were more than twice as likely as men to have under a week of cushion, 12.5% against 5.3%. Among women, 38.7% couldn't last two weeks. Among men, 26.5%.

When nearly half a profession can't cover one month of living expenses if they lose their income, their cost of living and taxes stop being trivial. Which raises the obvious question: Does the state you work in actually move those odds in your favor?

Top 10 states

Bottom 10 states

Where the paycheck goes furthest

Nevada won, with a composite score of 73.0. The case is plain. Advertising and PR firms make up 0.601% of all businesses in the state, the second-densest marketing economy in the country, built on the year-round spend behind Las Vegas and Reno hospitality, gaming, and entertainment. Add zero income tax on wages and a cost of living sitting almost exactly at the national average, and no other no-tax state matches it on industry concentration.

Wyoming scored 72.7, a hair behind Nevada. Almost all of that came from a perfect 100 on all three Google Trends terms, which is far easier to hit in a state of fewer than 600,000 people. Its real industry density is middle of the pack.

The same situation shows up with Kansas, which had the strongest search demand of any state on the mainland but fell to 21st. Its density, 0.346%, sits below the national median. People in Kansas are searching for marketing work faster than local employers are creating it. And California, despite weak search demand, landed 39th rather than last, because its fifth-in-the-nation density earns it a strong start before the country's highest cost of living and a 13.3% top tax rate drag it back down.

This brings up one more question. If the right states offer this much margin, why is nearly the whole field still nervous?

What people are actually afraid of

The fear isn't about loving the work less. It's about the work changing under them.

Asked what's causing burnout or stress right now, marketers put low pay first, at 35.2%. Constant platform and algorithm changes came next at 32.5%, followed by the pressure to keep learning new tools at 31.0%, AI making parts of the job feel replaceable at 29.6%, and fear of layoffs at 28.8%. Only 9.8% reported no stress at all.

AI sits underneath a lot of the stress. 54.7% said they're at least somewhat worried it will push them out of the field. Within that group, 19.4% are already applying for jobs outside marketing, and another 35.3% are quietly looking. The worry tracks how automatable each job feels. Paid media and PPC specialists are the most alarmed, with 37.1% extremely concerned and job-hunting elsewhere. PR and communications people are the calmest, at 12.5%. And most are adapting without help: 47.7% are learning AI tools on their own time, while only 29.3% get any time or resources from an employer.

The same low pay that tops the stress list is exactly what a low-tax, low-cost state like Nevada or Tennessee softens, and what California or Hawai‘i makes worse. The people most exposed, agency owners and freelancers, feel it hardest: 15.8% of them couldn't last a week without income, nearly double the survey average, and their satisfaction rate is the lowest of any group.

Methodology

The Digital Marketing Professional Index scores all 50 states and D.C. on four components, each normalized 0 to 100, then weighted and summed. Higher is better on every component.

Component 1: Marketing Industry Density (40%).Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2022, NAICS code 5418// (Advertising, Public Relations, and Related Services, the 4-digit group total across all establishments and legal forms). Density equals NAICS 5418 establishment count divided by all-industry establishment count, times 100. D.C.‘s raw density of 2.639% was winsorized to 0.579%, the 95th percentile of non-D.C. state values, before normalizing, so one small geography wouldn't collapse every other state toward zero. The raw D.C. figure appears in Table 3.

Component 2: Affordability (35%). BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, released February 19, 2026 (BEA 26-10), retrieved via FRED and updated February 20, 2026. The score inverts the RPP: (max RPP minus state RPP) divided by (max minus min), times 100. Arkansas (86.937) scores 100; California (110.720) scores 0. South Carolina's RPP was estimated at roughly 92.5 using a population-weighted average of confirmed metro (94.811) and non-metro (86.182) portions.

Component 3: Tax Advantage (15%). Tax Foundation, "State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, 2026," by Janelle Fritts and Katherine Loughead, February 2026. Top marginal rate on wages. Washington is treated as 0% (wages only). The score inverts the rate: (max rate minus state rate) divided by (max minus min), times 100. Zero-tax states score 100; California (13.3%) scores 0.

Component 4: Search Interest (10%). Google Trends Interest by Subregion for three terms: "digital marketing jobs," "remote marketing jobs," and "marketing manager salary." Period: June 8, 2025, to June 8, 2026. Geography: United States. Type: Web Search. The three values were averaged per state and min-max normalized to 0 to 100 across all 51 jurisdictions. Google Trends reports 0 to 100 relative to the peak state for each term.

Composite and tie-breaks. Composite = (Density × 0.40) + (Affordability × 0.35) + (Tax × 0.15) + (Search × 0.10). Ties break first on higher Density, then higher Affordability, then higher Search Interest.

Survey Methodology

To understand how Americans approach a career in digital marketing, Page One Power surveyed 1,000 adults across the country who work in the digital marketing field in July 2025. Participants answered a series of questions about the state of working in digital marketing. Responses were analyzed by demographic groups to identify trends and disparities.

This story was produced by Page One Power and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Copyright 2026 Stacker Media, LLC

This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 7:30 AM.