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I know I was making 150,000 as an ACD in Boston in 2000. That’s the equivalent of about 270,000 today. Know any ACDs making 270,000? ACDs are still making closer to 150,000. Twenty-five years later. It’s the same for every position in advertising. Except the C-suite.
Man that hurts. I make 150.
The average income for a family in 1960 was $5600, so I highly doubt a mid level copywriter bagged $25k a year.
Yeah, this post is what you get when you start talking to ChatGPT like it knows literally anything
That can’t possibly be true. Is it???
Omg
Rising Star
Yeah the salary for the 1960s is not accurate 🤣
Peggy Olson made $19,000 as a copywriter.
Lady CW here. I made $30K as a Jr. in 1996, and am mad they were making $25k in the 1960's.
I made $30k as a junior art director in 2015 so the trend might be real 😭
Chief
Mad Men is well researched so I’d start there when looking at salaries of the time.
Peggy makes $40/week as a junior copywriter. Using a Federal Reserve calculator, that’s $22k annual salary in today’s pay.
Pete was making $75/week as an account executive. That’s about $42k in today’s money.
Don Draper was making $30k (then was offered $35k from McCann and was countered with a cool $45k). Mind you, this is before the times of Group/Executive CD and Chief Creative Officer roles. That’s $320->$372k->$478k (a hell of a counter). These salaries are commensurate with high level ECDs/CCOs in New York today, which is really what he was at Sterling Cooper.
When I started as a junior copywriter 10 years ago, I was making $46k. That’s about $62k in today’s pay, which is on the low end of a junior copywriter’s salary range these days.
If anything, junior salaries have scaled up and more senior roles have stayed the same.
Now the big differences are:
- markets are more volatile and layoffs far more frequent
- some things have hyperinflated beyond this calculator average (like rent and groceries). Realtor.com says Pete’s 1BR (pre marital) apartment would have been 100-150/month. At $150, his rent would have been $1600 in today’s costs, which is certainly less than a 1BR in NYC these days.
- they got bonuses (instead of shareholders skimming off the top)
- you could actually work in this industry well into your 50s/60s like Sterling and Cooper. Nowadays you need to save aggressively, brace for obsolescence and pivot late in the career.
$8-12K would be more like it for mid-60s.