SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER JOBS SIT UNFILLED FOR A MONTH IN 42.2% OF POSTINGS

🔴 28.9% of US marketing job postings are still advertising 30 or more days after they went live.

For social media managers it is worse: 42.2% of listings are still running a month later, according to the 2026 Marketing Hiring Gap Report from Miami-based recruiter Talent Scout, released via GLOBE NEWSWIRE and carried by Business Insider Markets.

The report analyzed 6,731 US job postings across 16 marketing, creative and operations roles over a 60-day window ending August 24, 2026.

The price tag is the story. The median advertised salary for senior-level marketing roles has reached $135,000. Salary benchmarks came from the 1,914 postings that stated an annual figure, cross-checked against published medians: paid media manager at $102,500 against Glassdoor's $101,217, growth marketing manager at $132,938 against $131,000.

Talent Scout CEO Mike Bodkin, previously co-founder and CEO of agency Giant Propeller, frames the delay as a budget issue rather than a recruiting one. His words: senior execution now comes at prices most marketing budgets were never built to carry.

Context in the report: Stanford SIEPR puts new-graduate unemployment at 5.6% in early 2026, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 7% growth for marketing managers through 2034 at a median wage of $161,030. Junior talent is stuck. Senior talent is expensive.

One caveat the report states itself: it measures how long a listing has been live, not whether the job was ever filled.

📉 If your team posted a marketing role this year, how long did it stay open?

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