US Communications Hiring Market Update: Q2 2026

Our consultants share what they are seeing across the US market through the second quarter of the year.

The US market has been pulled in a few directions this quarter. Washington is spending less and intervening more. AI has taken over the policy agenda. And the political split now turns up in almost every brief we take. Senior hiring in our areas has kept things busy, even where the wider economy has gone quiet. Here is what the team are seeing in New York, Washington DC and San Francisco.

New York: Private Money Moves Into the Gap

The story everyone keeps coming back to is federal funding drying up. USAID is gone, most of its programmes with it, and money has been pulled from a long list of other government work at home and abroad. What is filling the gap is private capital.

Foundations, wealthy individual donors and a fair number of corporates are now paying for work the government used to fund. Some of it runs through new privately backed bodies set up to keep particular programmes alive. Some of it is simply established foundations giving more, and giving sooner than they had planned. This goes well beyond foreign aid, into health, research and social programmes of every kind.

That is feeding through to hiring. Foundations and mission-driven organisations are growing their communications and corporate affairs teams to match a bigger, more public role, and corporates are picking up social impact and public-private work that used to sit with the state. The tricky part is the kind of person clients want for it. In a country this divided, they are after communicators who can park their own views and still read as credible to people who disagree on almost everything. That is not a nice-to-have any more. It is the thing that gets someone hired.

Washington DC: AI Policy Is Where the Heat Is

Given how the Trump administration has been conducting business over the last 18 months, anyone holding strong Republican-side networks is in heavy demand. Real White House and Capitol Hill relationships are what clients are paying for, and the people who have them are not short of calls. Bipartisan range still pays off over time, but the immediate pull is towards those closest to the people now in power.

AI is the centre of it. About a quarter of the country’s federal lobbyists touched AI work last year, more than double the share in 2023. Some of that demand comes from the obvious places, the model developers, cloud firms and chip designers. A lot of it comes from healthcare and defence AI start-ups standing up Washington teams for the first time. The biggest AI companies have opened or grown their own DC offices to go with it.

There are not enough people to go round. Anyone with Hill time, a senior agency background or the right political relationships is being approached from several sides at once. The strongest interest goes to those who pair that political know-how with genuine regulatory expertise in a sector, usually healthcare, tech, energy or financial services. Pay has followed. Senior VP and Chief Policy Officer roles at the larger corporates and trade bodies are going for $425,000 to $750,000 base, with total packages reaching $1.2 million, and regulatory specialists are seeing rises of 5% to 8% this year.

San Francisco: Two Markets in One City

San Francisco is really running as two markets at the moment. The AI companies are doing most of the senior hiring, while the rest of tech is still nursing the cuts of the past year. There is plenty going on, but it is concentrated in a narrow band.

For comms and corporate affairs, nearly all the senior demand sits with the AI firms. As the technology draws more scrutiny, they want leaders who can explain it to regulators, journalists and the public, hold the line on reputation when things get rough, and build a policy voice where there was none before. It is close to what Washington is chasing, and the two cities are increasingly fishing the same small pond. Across the rest of tech it looks much like our other markets, fewer roles, a higher bar and a clear preference for people who can show they earn their keep commercially.

What This Means for the US Hiring Market

A few things stand out across all three cities. The senior market continues to be busy in the areas we cover, and clients keep asking for the same handful of qualities. Credibility, and an absence of obvious bias, in a country that no longer agrees on much. A real command of regulation and working knowledge of multiple. And the knack of taking a hard subject, AI most of all, and making it land with very different audiences.

Who pays for what in American public life is being reset, and that is throwing up new briefs across foundations, corporates and tech. For senior communications and public affairs people who can keep their judgement in a climate like this, it is a good time to be in the market. For the firms hiring them, there is not much room to get it wrong.

Whether you are hiring senior talent or weighing up your own next move, our team would be glad to help. We work across the US, with businesses that need to move quickly and secure the right people in a market where the strongest candidates do not stay available for long.