Looking at financial turnover, generally the trend is also downwards. Although a significant percentage of practitioners estimate their organisation had a turnover of over £1million in the last financial year (22 per cent), this is slightly lower than their estimates of two years ago (23 per cent).

Budgets in PR

Research supplied by ComsRes via the CIPR State of the Profession Report

There are fewer generous communications budgets to be found at the moment. Whereas two years ago, 22 per cent of in-house communication budgets were more than £1 million, today just 17 per cent of budgets are. As a result, there has been an increase in mid-size communication budgets, with 32 per cent of budgets today in the range of £100,000 to £500,000, compared with 27 per cent of budgets two years ago.

How budgets compare between PR sectors

Research supplied by ComsRes via the CIPR State of the Profession Report

Phil Morgan director of policy and communications at CIPR, is not surprised that the budget trend is downwards: “It is clear that the bite of the economic downturn continues to be felt throughout the profession and this year’s findings on PR budgets, unsurprisingly, shares a lot in common to last year’s report.“ Morgan points out, however, that the private sector is faring better than the public arena: “While public sector communications budgets have seen the biggest decreases over the last two years, largely as a result of spending cuts, by comparison, the budgets for in-house private sector, consultancies, and NGOs are relatively unaffected.“

Predicting the trends for the future, Morgan is more hopeful: “Practitioners continue to adjust and find ways of exploring new opportunities as our profession continues to evolve, and this can only give us plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future.”

Methodology

Research consultancy ComRes surveyed 1,564 CIPR members online between 7 September and 10 October 2011.