Marketing Agency Employee Turnover Statistics: 2026
Agencies run on people and lose them faster than almost any other business. Payroll takes 55% of gross income at a well-run agency. And North American agencies lost 18% of their staff in 2024, against a 13% voluntary-turnover average across all U.S. industries. UK agencies lost 24.1% in a single year.
One definition before the numbers, because the search results for this topic mix up two different things. Agency employee turnover is the share of staff who leave in a year; client churn is the share of accounts that leave, and the two are not interchangeable. A page quoting a 30% agency "turnover" figure is often talking about clients, not people. Every figure on this page is about people.
This page collects the most-cited marketing agency employee turnover statistics for 2026: turnover rates against other industries, what a departure costs, salaries by agency role, freelancer supply, time to hire, and what leavers say on the way out. Where a benchmark comes from cross-industry research rather than an agency survey, it's labeled that way. So is anything measured outside the US.
Key Marketing Agency Turnover Statistics
The essential agency talent benchmarks in one place, from trade-body censuses, primary surveys, and platform-scale workforce data.
average employee turnover at North American ad and marketing agencies in 2024
Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025
total staff turnover at UK agencies in 2024, down from 31.2% in 2023
IPA Agency Census 2024 (UK)
U.S. all-industry voluntary turnover, against 18% at agencies
Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey
annual salary: the cost of replacing a single employee
Gallup, 2019 (cross-industry)
Average employee turnover at North American advertising and marketing agencies was 18% in 2024, down from 20% in 2023. (Source: Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025)
UK agency staff turnover ran 24.1% in the year to September 2024, down from a brutal 31.2% the year before. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
U.S. voluntary turnover across all industries averaged 13.0% from 2024 to 2025, down from 17.3% in the 2023 survey. Agencies run five points above that. (Source: Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey, 2,617 organizations; cross-industry)
Professional services, the sector agencies and consultancies sit in, posted the highest industry turnover on LinkedIn's platform, above tech and media at 12.9% and a 10.6% global average. LinkedIn doesn't publish the professional-services percentage. (Source: LinkedIn Talent Blog, data July 2021 to June 2022)
Replacing one employee costs between one-half and two times that employee's annual salary. It's a cross-industry benchmark, and it lands hardest on a business whose only asset is people. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Voluntary turnover costs U.S. businesses roughly $1 trillion a year. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
The average U.S. marketing account manager earns $86,882 a year. It's the most common seat in an agency, and the one that empties most often. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Global average time to hire reached an all-time high of 44 days, and professional services runs slower at 47. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Time-to-Hire Factbook, 2023; cross-industry)
Takeaway: Read those eight numbers as one story. An agency pays market salaries out of a people budget that already takes 55 cents of every dollar. It loses nearly one in five of those people every year. Then it spends a month and a half filling each seat, at a cost of half a salary or more.
At those rates turnover isn't an HR nuisance. It's a tax on the business model, and the rest of this page prices it. (The wider set of agency benchmarks, margins, revenue per employee and pipeline, is in our marketing agency industry statistics.)
Agency Employee Turnover Rates vs. Other Industries
Every credible dataset puts agencies and marketing roles at or near the top of the turnover table. The only real argument is how far above average the industry sits.
“Total staff turnover over the 12 months leading up to 1 September 2024 was an estimated 24.1%, down from 31.2% in 2023 and down from 29.7% to 21.2% after redundancies are excluded.”
| Segment | Annual turnover | Source, year |
|---|---|---|
| UK agencies, all staff | 24.1% | IPA Agency Census, 2024 (UK) |
| UK creative and non-media agencies | 24.9% | IPA Agency Census, 2024 (UK) |
| UK media agencies | 23.2% | IPA Agency Census, 2024 (UK) |
| North American ad and marketing agencies | 18% | Campaign US Agency Performance Review, 2025 |
| Marketing job function (global) | 17% | LinkedIn, 2018 analysis (see stat 3) |
| U.S. all-industry voluntary turnover | 13.0% | Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey |
| Tech and media industries (global) | 12.9% | LinkedIn, 2022 |
| Global all-function average | 10.6% | LinkedIn, 2022 |
North American agency turnover averaged 18% in 2024, down from 20% in 2023. The spread was wide. Havas Media Network reported 28% and Assembly 26%, while Gut posted 11.7% and Highdive 7%. (Source: Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025)
UK creative and non-media agencies lost 24.9% of staff in 2024; media agencies lost 23.2%. Strip out redundancies and the rates were still 20.8% and 21.7%. One in five people, in a good year. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
Marketing had the highest turnover of any job function in LinkedIn's 2018 analysis, at 17% against a global average of roughly 11%. One caveat: LinkedIn has since replaced that post with a 2022 update that no longer breaks marketing out. The update puts HR at almost 15% and the all-function average at about 11%. (Source: LinkedIn, 2018, as reported by IQ Partners; LinkedIn Talent Blog, 2022)
Professional services topped LinkedIn's industry turnover rankings for July 2021 to June 2022, ahead of tech and media at 12.9% and a global average of 10.6%. For a U.S. baseline, Mercer's 2025 survey of 2,617 organizations puts all-industry voluntary turnover at 13.0%. (Sources: LinkedIn Talent Blog, 2022; Mercer, 2025)
Back in 2016, a joint 4A's and LinkedIn study found advertising's turnover gap against related industries had grown 10% in a single year. This is a decade-old pattern, not a post-pandemic blip. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
The one bright spot: turnover is falling from its peak. UK turnover dropped seven points year over year (31.2% to 24.1%), and the North American average eased from 20% to 18%. That's consistent with a cooling job market, not better retention. (Sources: IPA Agency Census 2024; Campaign US, 2025)
Takeaway: If your agency loses 15% to 20% of its people a year, you're not mismanaging. You're average for the industry. And that's the problem. An average agency rebuilds a fifth of itself every year, so any process that lives in someone's head instead of a system gets deleted and rewritten every five years.
The agencies at 7% to 11% aren't luckier. They've built roles people can grow inside. Which, as the exit data further down shows, is exactly what departing agency staff say they couldn't find.
What Employee Turnover Costs an Agency
The turnover-cost benchmarks are cross-industry. But they bite hardest in a business where people are both the largest cost and the whole product. Apply the standard multipliers to agency salaries and the invoice gets uncomfortable fast.
“The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary.”
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, counting recruiting, ramp time, lost productivity, and the knowledge that walks out with them. Gallup calls that range conservative. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Voluntary turnover alone costs U.S. businesses about $1 trillion every year. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Average direct cost per hire was nearly $4,700 in SHRM's 2022 benchmark, and $5,475 for a non-executive hire in its 2025 report. An executive hire now averages $35,879. None of that counts a single hour of lost productivity. (Source: SHRM, 2022 and 2025 Benchmarking Reports; cross-industry)
Run the math on an average agency. Promethean Research's average surveyed agency has 31 employees and $4.43M in revenue. At the North American 18% turnover rate, that's five or six departures a year. At an $86,882 account manager salary and the conservative half-salary replacement cost, each departure runs about $43,000. Call it $215,000 to $260,000 a year in turnover cost. (Computed from: Campaign US 2025; Glassdoor 2025; Promethean Research 2026; Gallup 2019)
That turnover bill eats close to 40% of the average agency's profit. The average agency net margin is 13%, about $575,000 on $4.43M. A normal year of attrition quietly takes $215,000 to $260,000 of it. (Computed from: Promethean Research, 2026 State of Digital Services; the margin benchmarks are in our agency profit margins post)
People costs already claim 55% of adjusted gross income at a healthy agency under the Agency Management Institute's 55:25:20 benchmark. So turnover cost comes out of the 20% that was supposed to be profit. (Source: Agency Management Institute)
Takeaway: Turnover cost is invisible on your P&L because it's smeared across recruiting fees, unbillable senior time, and projects that shipped late while the new hire ramped. Total it up and a normal year of attrition costs as much as a senior full-time hire. You're paying for that person whether or not you fix the thing that's making people leave.
There's a second way agencies pay for it. Hiring ahead of demand is how revenue per employee breaks, and the agencies stuck at the 20-person wall are usually the ones re-hiring the same seats over and over. It's also why the first dedicated sales hire so often fails: agencies make their most expensive hire with the least structure around it, then eat the full replacement cost eighteen months later.
The turnover numbers above are what an agency looks like when the roles, the pipeline, and the decisions all route through one person. The Bottleneck Score is eighteen questions and five minutes, and it gives you one number for how much of your growth stops when you do. Free, with the result on the next screen.
Get your Bottleneck ScoreIt's a mirror, not a plan. It shows where the growth still depends on you, and how much.
Agency Salaries by Role
Pay is the fourth-ranked reason agency people leave. But it's the one owners fixate on, because it's the only reason with a number attached. Here's what the market pays for the seats agencies hire most. All figures are U.S. Glassdoor total-pay estimates (base plus bonus and variable pay), checked September 2026.
| Role | Average total pay | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| Executive Creative Director | $298,667 | $224,000 to $411,919 (25th to 75th percentile); $542,939 at the 90th |
| Creative Director | $157,944 | $119,741 to $210,527 (25th to 75th); $270,643 at the 90th |
| Digital Media Buyer | $102,707 | $78,431 to $136,430 (25th to 75th) |
| Media Buyer | $97,630 | $76,514 to $126,238 (25th to 75th) |
| Marketing Account Manager | $86,882 | $69,317 to $110,215 (25th to 75th) |
| SEO Specialist | $86,595 | $65,899 to $114,590 (25th to 75th) |
| Junior SEO Specialist | $75,700 | $56,914 to $101,395 (25th to 75th) |
The average U.S. marketing account manager earns $86,882, with the middle half of the market between $69,317 and $110,215. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Creative directors average $157,944, and executive creative directors $298,667. The 90th percentile of ECDs sits above $540,000. Losing one is a client-retention event, not a vacancy. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Media buyers average $97,630 and digital media buyers $102,707. Specialist seats now out-earn generalist account management. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
The junior-to-mid SEO ladder runs $75,700 to $86,595, one of the flattest progressions in the agency. That's a structural reason SEO talent job-hops for raises. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
The pay gap has been pushing people out of agencies for a decade. In 2016, entry-level advertising jobs paid $45,000 less than comparable tech roles, per the 4A's and LinkedIn study. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
Takeaway: Benchmark your comp against this table, but read it next to your margin. An agency at 13% net margin can't outbid the market on salary, because the money isn't there. The agencies that pay top-quartile without dying run 25% to 30% margins on narrowed, productized services. Margin is what funds retention.
It's the same equation that governs what agency owners can pay themselves. Most compensation problems are positioning problems. The agency can't pay more because it can't charge more.
Freelancers and Contractors: Where Agency Talent Goes
“The empty chair always escalates to the one person who can’t leave.”
As full-time retention got harder and revenue got lumpier, agencies moved work to a contingent bench. The freelance supply has never been deeper, or more expensive at the top.
72.9 million Americans worked independently in 2025, up from 72.7 million in 2024 and 72.1 million in 2023. (Source: MBO Partners, State of Independence in America, 2025 and 2024 reports)
A record 5.6 million independent workers earned more than $100,000 in 2025, up nearly 19% year over year. The senior freelancers agencies rent now bill like the senior staff they couldn't keep. (Source: MBO Partners, 2025)
64 million Americans, 38% of the U.S. workforce, did freelance work in 2023, adding $1.27 trillion in earnings to the economy. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023, N=3,000)
47% of freelancers (about 30 million people) provided knowledge services such as marketing, IT, programming, and business consulting. Those are the exact skills agencies sell. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023)
Freelancers adopted AI faster than employees: 20% use generative AI regularly, against 9% of non-freelance professionals. That's 2.2 times the rate. The bench isn't only cheaper than headcount. Parts of it are more current. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023)
Takeaway: The freelance economy hands agency owners a pressure valve and a mirror. Every senior person who leaves your agency to go independent joins a 72.9-million-person talent pool your competitors can rent by the day, with none of your overhead.
So if your delivery model only works with loyal full-timers in fixed seats, the labor market is arbitraging against you. If your services are productized enough that contractors can execute inside them, the same market becomes your flex capacity.
Time to Hire and the Agency Talent Market
The replacement fee is only half of what turnover costs. The other half is the empty chair. The hiring data here is cross-industry and labeled as such, because no agency-specific time-to-hire benchmark survives scrutiny. And it says that chair stays empty longer than ever.
Global average time to hire hit an all-time high of 44 days in early 2023, up from 43 a year earlier, after rising for four straight years. The analysis covered a quarter million hires across eight industries and 25-plus countries. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Time-to-Hire Factbook, 2023; cross-industry)
The professional services industry, the category agencies fall into, averages 47 days to hire, well above the global average. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, 2023)
Role-level variance is extreme. Some jobs fill in 14 days, and many sit vacant two to three months or more. For an agency, that's a full client engagement delivered short-handed. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, 2023)
U.S. advertising agency employment stood at 238,100 jobs in November 2024 on a preliminary, non-seasonally adjusted basis, with monthly changes mixed across the year: up in six months, down in five. The industry is treading water, not growing its bench. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Ad Age Datacenter, January 2025)
The BLS projects advertising sales agent employment will decline 7% from 2025 to 2035, from a base of 99,300 jobs. It's one of several agency-adjacent roles the government expects to shrink outright. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 to 2035 projections)
UK agencies carried 1,149 open vacancies against a 26,787-person industry headcount at the 2024 census date. That's about 4% of all seats empty at any given moment. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
Takeaway: Combine 47 days to hire with 18% to 24% annual turnover and the arithmetic gets grim. An average agency has someone leaving, ramping, or missing from a seat for most of the year, every year. You can't schedule client delivery around that.
It's a big part of why utilization targets keep missing, and why founders keep absorbing the overflow personally. The empty chair always escalates to the one person who can't leave.
Why Agency Employees Leave
“Retention isn’t a perks program. It’s a byproduct of an agency built to run without its founder.”
The exit data has been remarkably stable for a decade. And pay isn't at the top of it.
“A majority of people who left the industry (54%) said the reason was little opportunity for advancement.”
54% of people who left agencies cited little opportunity for advancement. It's the number one reason, ahead of money. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
50% wanted more challenging work, 46% cited dissatisfaction with agency leadership, and 45% cited pay. Three of the top four drivers are about the design of the job, not the size of the paycheck. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
70% of media, marketing, and creative professionals experienced burnout in the past 12 months, per the Australian industry's Mentally-Healthy survey. (Source: Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024, Never Not Creative, supported by UnLtd; Australian data)
31% of UK advertising practitioners report being affected by stress or anxiety, and for 14% it's primarily work-related. (Source: All In Census 2025, Advertising Association; UK data, 14,000-plus respondents)
9% of all UK ad-industry respondents say they're likely to leave the industry over lack of inclusion or discrimination. That rises to 24% of Black respondents (down from 30% in 2023) and 23% of trans respondents. (Source: All In Census 2025; UK data)
Takeaway: Look at what the leavers said. No room to advance. Work that doesn't stretch them. Leadership they don't rate. Those are the symptoms of a founder-dependent agency, where every interesting decision routes through one person and "advancement" means waiting for the founder to let go of something.
I'll say why I keep coming back to this, because it's not the obvious read of a turnover page. Specialized, productized agencies keep people longer for an unglamorous reason. When the service is defined, the roles inside it have real scope, a visible ladder, and the margin to fund the raises. Retention isn't a perks program. It's a byproduct of an agency built to run without its founder. And that same property is what makes an agency worth acquiring.
That's the work we do in the Relevance Engineering Program: build a growth system the company can run, and keep improving it, so the positioning, the pipeline, and the roles stop living in one person's head. If you'd rather start with a number, the free Bottleneck Score shows how much of your growth still runs through you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average employee turnover rate at a marketing agency?
North American advertising and marketing agencies averaged 18% employee turnover in 2024, down from 20% in 2023, according to Campaign US's Agency Performance Review 2025. UK agencies ran higher: 24.1% total staff turnover in the year to September 2024, per the IPA Agency Census, or 21.2% excluding redundancies.
Is employee turnover higher in marketing than in other industries?
Yes. North American agencies averaged 18% turnover in 2024 (Campaign US), against a 13.0% U.S. all-industry voluntary turnover average (Mercer, 2025). At the industry level, professional services, which includes agencies and consultancies, topped LinkedIn's turnover rankings for 2021 to 2022, ahead of tech and media at 12.9% and a 10.6% global average. LinkedIn's earlier 2018 analysis put marketing roles at 17%, the highest of any job function.
How much does it cost an agency to replace an employee?
Gallup's cross-industry benchmark puts replacement cost at one-half to two times the departing employee's annual salary, and calls that conservative. Applied to the average U.S. marketing account manager salary of $86,882 (Glassdoor, 2026), one departure conservatively costs about $43,000, before counting client disruption. SHRM's 2025 benchmark puts the direct cost per non-executive hire at $5,475.
Why do agency employees quit?
The 4A's and LinkedIn study of agency leavers found 54% cited little opportunity for advancement, 50% wanted more challenging work, 46% were dissatisfied with leadership, and 45% cited pay. Burnout compounds it: 70% of media, marketing, and creative professionals reported burnout in the past year (Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024, Australia).
How long does it take to fill an agency role?
There's no reliable agency-specific benchmark. But the professional services industry averages 47 days to hire, above the 44-day global average, according to the Josh Bersin Company and AMS Time-to-Hire Factbook (2023).
Every statistic on this page links to its original publisher in the Sources section. If you cite the page itself, this is the line to use.
Sources & Methodology
Statistics on this page are drawn from the primary sources below. Cross-industry and non-US figures are labeled inline. Glassdoor figures are total-pay estimates (base plus variable pay) as shown on 21 September 2026; they move month to month and skew above base-salary-only surveys. Two computed figures (the per-agency turnover cost and its share of profit) combine sources and are labeled "Computed from." Every quote on this page was checked against the live source page before publication.
IPA, Agency Census 2024 (UK), news release with turnover and vacancy figures: https://ipa.co.uk/news/agency-census-2024 ; report page: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/agency-census-2024
Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025: Talent trends at North American agencies: https://www.campaignlive.com/article/agency-performance-review-2025-talent-trends-north-american-agencies/1913155
LinkedIn Talent Blog, Industries with the Highest (and Lowest) Turnover Rates (2022 data): https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/industries-with-the-highest-turnover-rates
LinkedIn, 2018 job-function turnover analysis (marketing 17%), as reported by IQ Partners: https://www.iqpartners.com/blog/marketing-jobs-have-the-highest-turnover-rate/ ; LinkedIn's replacement post (2022): https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-analytics/types-of-jobs-with-most-turnover
4A's and LinkedIn, joint agency turnover study (2016), via Marketing Dive: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/turnover-in-advertising-is-higher-than-related-industries-study/416130/
Gallup, This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion (2019): https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-problem-costs-businesses-trillion.aspx
SHRM, The Real Costs of Recruitment (2022 benchmarking): https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/real-costs-recruitment ; SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports (October 2025): https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/shrm-releases-2025-benchmarking-reports--how-does-your-organizat
Glassdoor, U.S. salary pages for marketing account manager, creative director, executive creative director, media buyer, digital media buyer, SEO specialist, and junior SEO specialist (checked September 2026): https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/
Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey (2,617 organizations): https://www.imercer.com/articleinsights/workforce-turnover-trends
MBO Partners, State of Independence in America, 15th annual (2025): https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence ; 2024 report: https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence/2024-report
Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023 (N=3,000): https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2023-research-report
Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Talent Climate: Time-to-Hire Benchmark Factbook (2023): https://joshbersin.com/time-to-hire-benchmark-factbook/ ; release with the day counts: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-shows-that-hiring-is-harder-than-ever-time-to-hire-increasing-significantly-for-almost-all-roles-301839785.html
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Ad Age Datacenter, U.S. ad employment fell 1,500 jobs in December 2024 (January 2025): https://adage.com/article/datacenter/us-ad-employment-fell-1500-jobs-december-2024/2598091
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Advertising Sales Agents (2025 to 2035 edition): https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/advertising-sales-agents.htm
Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024 (Never Not Creative, supported by UnLtd, Australia), via Campaign Brief: https://campaignbrief.com/mentally-healthy-survey-2024-reveals-70-of-industry-has-experienced-burnout/
Advertising Association, All In Census 2025 (UK): https://adassoc.org.uk/our-work/2025-all-in-census-tracks-industrys-steady-progress-on-talent-and-inclusion/ ; data page: https://advertisingallin.co.uk/all-in-census-data/
Promethean Research, 2026 State of Digital Services (N=119) and Digital Agency Industry Report (2026): https://prometheanresearch.com/
Agency Management Institute, 55:25:20 agency financial benchmark: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/
About the author
David Hoos
Founder, Haus Advisors
David Hoos works with the owners of founder-led software and technical services agencies that have built real businesses but haven't yet built the systems that let those businesses run without them. Haus Advisors helps move the pipeline, the reputation, and the follow-up that currently live in the founder into the business, so the agency is worth more whether or not it's ever sold. He hosts the Behind the Agency podcast.Agencies run on people and lose them faster than almost any other business. Payroll takes 55% of gross income at a well-run agency. And North American agencies lost 18% of their staff in 2024, against a 13% voluntary-turnover average across all U.S. industries. UK agencies lost 24.1% in a single year.
One definition before the numbers, because the search results for this topic mix up two different things. Agency employee turnover is the share of staff who leave in a year; client churn is the share of accounts that leave, and the two are not interchangeable. A page quoting a 30% agency "turnover" figure is often talking about clients, not people. Every figure on this page is about people.
This page collects the most-cited marketing agency employee turnover statistics for 2026: turnover rates against other industries, what a departure costs, salaries by agency role, freelancer supply, time to hire, and what leavers say on the way out. Where a benchmark comes from cross-industry research rather than an agency survey, it's labeled that way. So is anything measured outside the US.
Key Marketing Agency Turnover Statistics
The essential agency talent benchmarks in one place, from trade-body censuses, primary surveys, and platform-scale workforce data.
Average employee turnover at North American advertising and marketing agencies was 18% in 2024, down from 20% in 2023. (Source: Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025)
UK agency staff turnover ran 24.1% in the year to September 2024, down from a brutal 31.2% the year before. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
U.S. voluntary turnover across all industries averaged 13.0% from 2024 to 2025, down from 17.3% in the 2023 survey. Agencies run five points above that. (Source: Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey, 2,617 organizations; cross-industry)
Professional services, the sector agencies and consultancies sit in, posted the highest industry turnover on LinkedIn's platform, above tech and media at 12.9% and a 10.6% global average. LinkedIn doesn't publish the professional-services percentage. (Source: LinkedIn Talent Blog, data July 2021 to June 2022)
Replacing one employee costs between one-half and two times that employee's annual salary. It's a cross-industry benchmark, and it lands hardest on a business whose only asset is people. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Voluntary turnover costs U.S. businesses roughly $1 trillion a year. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
The average U.S. marketing account manager earns $86,882 a year. It's the most common seat in an agency, and the one that empties most often. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Global average time to hire reached an all-time high of 44 days, and professional services runs slower at 47. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Time-to-Hire Factbook, 2023; cross-industry)
Takeaway: Read those eight numbers as one story. An agency pays market salaries out of a people budget that already takes 55 cents of every dollar. It loses nearly one in five of those people every year. Then it spends a month and a half filling each seat, at a cost of half a salary or more.
At those rates turnover isn't an HR nuisance. It's a tax on the business model, and the rest of this page prices it. (The wider set of agency benchmarks, margins, revenue per employee and pipeline, is in our marketing agency industry statistics.)
Agency Employee Turnover Rates vs. Other Industries
Every credible dataset puts agencies and marketing roles at or near the top of the turnover table. The only real argument is how far above average the industry sits.
North American agency turnover averaged 18% in 2024, down from 20% in 2023. The spread was wide. Havas Media Network reported 28% and Assembly 26%, while Gut posted 11.7% and Highdive 7%. (Source: Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025)
UK creative and non-media agencies lost 24.9% of staff in 2024; media agencies lost 23.2%. Strip out redundancies and the rates were still 20.8% and 21.7%. One in five people, in a good year. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
Marketing had the highest turnover of any job function in LinkedIn's 2018 analysis, at 17% against a global average of roughly 11%. One caveat: LinkedIn has since replaced that post with a 2022 update that no longer breaks marketing out. The update puts HR at almost 15% and the all-function average at about 11%. (Source: LinkedIn, 2018, as reported by IQ Partners; LinkedIn Talent Blog, 2022)
Professional services topped LinkedIn's industry turnover rankings for July 2021 to June 2022, ahead of tech and media at 12.9% and a global average of 10.6%. For a U.S. baseline, Mercer's 2025 survey of 2,617 organizations puts all-industry voluntary turnover at 13.0%. (Sources: LinkedIn Talent Blog, 2022; Mercer, 2025)
Back in 2016, a joint 4A's and LinkedIn study found advertising's turnover gap against related industries had grown 10% in a single year. This is a decade-old pattern, not a post-pandemic blip. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
The one bright spot: turnover is falling from its peak. UK turnover dropped seven points year over year (31.2% to 24.1%), and the North American average eased from 20% to 18%. That's consistent with a cooling job market, not better retention. (Sources: IPA Agency Census 2024; Campaign US, 2025)
Takeaway: If your agency loses 15% to 20% of its people a year, you're not mismanaging. You're average for the industry. And that's the problem. An average agency rebuilds a fifth of itself every year, so any process that lives in someone's head instead of a system gets deleted and rewritten every five years.
The agencies at 7% to 11% aren't luckier. They've built roles people can grow inside. Which, as the exit data further down shows, is exactly what departing agency staff say they couldn't find.
What Employee Turnover Costs an Agency
The turnover-cost benchmarks are cross-industry. But they bite hardest in a business where people are both the largest cost and the whole product. Apply the standard multipliers to agency salaries and the invoice gets uncomfortable fast.
Replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, counting recruiting, ramp time, lost productivity, and the knowledge that walks out with them. Gallup calls that range conservative. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Voluntary turnover alone costs U.S. businesses about $1 trillion every year. (Source: Gallup, 2019; cross-industry)
Average direct cost per hire was nearly $4,700 in SHRM's 2022 benchmark, and $5,475 for a non-executive hire in its 2025 report. An executive hire now averages $35,879. None of that counts a single hour of lost productivity. (Source: SHRM, 2022 and 2025 Benchmarking Reports; cross-industry)
Run the math on an average agency. Promethean Research's average surveyed agency has 31 employees and $4.43M in revenue. At the North American 18% turnover rate, that's five or six departures a year. At an $86,882 account manager salary and the conservative half-salary replacement cost, each departure runs about $43,000. Call it $215,000 to $260,000 a year in turnover cost. (Computed from: Campaign US 2025; Glassdoor 2025; Promethean Research 2026; Gallup 2019)
That turnover bill eats close to 40% of the average agency's profit. The average agency net margin is 13%, about $575,000 on $4.43M. A normal year of attrition quietly takes $215,000 to $260,000 of it. (Computed from: Promethean Research, 2026 State of Digital Services; the margin benchmarks are in our agency profit margins post)
People costs already claim 55% of adjusted gross income at a healthy agency under the Agency Management Institute's 55:25:20 benchmark. So turnover cost comes out of the 20% that was supposed to be profit. (Source: Agency Management Institute)
Takeaway: Turnover cost is invisible on your P&L because it's smeared across recruiting fees, unbillable senior time, and projects that shipped late while the new hire ramped. Total it up and a normal year of attrition costs as much as a senior full-time hire. You're paying for that person whether or not you fix the thing that's making people leave.
There's a second way agencies pay for it. Hiring ahead of demand is how revenue per employee breaks, and the agencies stuck at the 20-person wall are usually the ones re-hiring the same seats over and over. It's also why the first dedicated sales hire so often fails: agencies make their most expensive hire with the least structure around it, then eat the full replacement cost eighteen months later.
Agency Salaries by Role
Pay is the fourth-ranked reason agency people leave. But it's the one owners fixate on, because it's the only reason with a number attached. Here's what the market pays for the seats agencies hire most. All figures are U.S. Glassdoor total-pay estimates (base plus bonus and variable pay), checked September 2026.
The average U.S. marketing account manager earns $86,882, with the middle half of the market between $69,317 and $110,215. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Creative directors average $157,944, and executive creative directors $298,667. The 90th percentile of ECDs sits above $540,000. Losing one is a client-retention event, not a vacancy. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
Media buyers average $97,630 and digital media buyers $102,707. Specialist seats now out-earn generalist account management. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
The junior-to-mid SEO ladder runs $75,700 to $86,595, one of the flattest progressions in the agency. That's a structural reason SEO talent job-hops for raises. (Source: Glassdoor, 2026)
The pay gap has been pushing people out of agencies for a decade. In 2016, entry-level advertising jobs paid $45,000 less than comparable tech roles, per the 4A's and LinkedIn study. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
Takeaway: Benchmark your comp against this table, but read it next to your margin. An agency at 13% net margin can't outbid the market on salary, because the money isn't there. The agencies that pay top-quartile without dying run 25% to 30% margins on narrowed, productized services. Margin is what funds retention.
It's the same equation that governs what agency owners can pay themselves. Most compensation problems are positioning problems. The agency can't pay more because it can't charge more.
Freelancers and Contractors: Where Agency Talent Goes
As full-time retention got harder and revenue got lumpier, agencies moved work to a contingent bench. The freelance supply has never been deeper, or more expensive at the top.
72.9 million Americans worked independently in 2025, up from 72.7 million in 2024 and 72.1 million in 2023. (Source: MBO Partners, State of Independence in America, 2025 and 2024 reports)
A record 5.6 million independent workers earned more than $100,000 in 2025, up nearly 19% year over year. The senior freelancers agencies rent now bill like the senior staff they couldn't keep. (Source: MBO Partners, 2025)
64 million Americans, 38% of the U.S. workforce, did freelance work in 2023, adding $1.27 trillion in earnings to the economy. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023, N=3,000)
47% of freelancers (about 30 million people) provided knowledge services such as marketing, IT, programming, and business consulting. Those are the exact skills agencies sell. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023)
Freelancers adopted AI faster than employees: 20% use generative AI regularly, against 9% of non-freelance professionals. That's 2.2 times the rate. The bench isn't only cheaper than headcount. Parts of it are more current. (Source: Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023)
Takeaway: The freelance economy hands agency owners a pressure valve and a mirror. Every senior person who leaves your agency to go independent joins a 72.9-million-person talent pool your competitors can rent by the day, with none of your overhead.
So if your delivery model only works with loyal full-timers in fixed seats, the labor market is arbitraging against you. If your services are productized enough that contractors can execute inside them, the same market becomes your flex capacity.
Time to Hire and the Agency Talent Market
The replacement fee is only half of what turnover costs. The other half is the empty chair. The hiring data here is cross-industry and labeled as such, because no agency-specific time-to-hire benchmark survives scrutiny. And it says that chair stays empty longer than ever.
Global average time to hire hit an all-time high of 44 days in early 2023, up from 43 a year earlier, after rising for four straight years. The analysis covered a quarter million hires across eight industries and 25-plus countries. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Time-to-Hire Factbook, 2023; cross-industry)
The professional services industry, the category agencies fall into, averages 47 days to hire, well above the global average. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, 2023)
Role-level variance is extreme. Some jobs fill in 14 days, and many sit vacant two to three months or more. For an agency, that's a full client engagement delivered short-handed. (Source: Josh Bersin Company and AMS, 2023)
U.S. advertising agency employment stood at 238,100 jobs in November 2024 on a preliminary, non-seasonally adjusted basis, with monthly changes mixed across the year: up in six months, down in five. The industry is treading water, not growing its bench. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Ad Age Datacenter, January 2025)
The BLS projects advertising sales agent employment will decline 7% from 2025 to 2035, from a base of 99,300 jobs. It's one of several agency-adjacent roles the government expects to shrink outright. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 to 2035 projections)
UK agencies carried 1,149 open vacancies against a 26,787-person industry headcount at the 2024 census date. That's about 4% of all seats empty at any given moment. (Source: IPA Agency Census 2024; UK data)
Takeaway: Combine 47 days to hire with 18% to 24% annual turnover and the arithmetic gets grim. An average agency has someone leaving, ramping, or missing from a seat for most of the year, every year. You can't schedule client delivery around that.
It's a big part of why utilization targets keep missing, and why founders keep absorbing the overflow personally. The empty chair always escalates to the one person who can't leave.
Why Agency Employees Leave
The exit data has been remarkably stable for a decade. And pay isn't at the top of it.
54% of people who left agencies cited little opportunity for advancement. It's the number one reason, ahead of money. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
50% wanted more challenging work, 46% cited dissatisfaction with agency leadership, and 45% cited pay. Three of the top four drivers are about the design of the job, not the size of the paycheck. (Source: 4A's and LinkedIn, 2016)
70% of media, marketing, and creative professionals experienced burnout in the past 12 months, per the Australian industry's Mentally-Healthy survey. (Source: Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024, Never Not Creative, supported by UnLtd; Australian data)
31% of UK advertising practitioners report being affected by stress or anxiety, and for 14% it's primarily work-related. (Source: All In Census 2025, Advertising Association; UK data, 14,000-plus respondents)
9% of all UK ad-industry respondents say they're likely to leave the industry over lack of inclusion or discrimination. That rises to 24% of Black respondents (down from 30% in 2023) and 23% of trans respondents. (Source: All In Census 2025; UK data)
Takeaway: Look at what the leavers said. No room to advance. Work that doesn't stretch them. Leadership they don't rate. Those are the symptoms of a founder-dependent agency, where every interesting decision routes through one person and "advancement" means waiting for the founder to let go of something.
I'll say why I keep coming back to this, because it's not the obvious read of a turnover page. Specialized, productized agencies keep people longer for an unglamorous reason. When the service is defined, the roles inside it have real scope, a visible ladder, and the margin to fund the raises. Retention isn't a perks program. It's a byproduct of an agency built to run without its founder. And that same property is what makes an agency worth acquiring.
That's the work we do in the Relevance Engineering Program: build a growth system the company can run, and keep improving it, so the positioning, the pipeline, and the roles stop living in one person's head. If you'd rather start with a number, the free Bottleneck Score shows how much of your growth still runs through you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average employee turnover rate at a marketing agency?
North American advertising and marketing agencies averaged 18% employee turnover in 2024, down from 20% in 2023, according to Campaign US's Agency Performance Review 2025. UK agencies ran higher: 24.1% total staff turnover in the year to September 2024, per the IPA Agency Census, or 21.2% excluding redundancies.
Is employee turnover higher in marketing than in other industries?
Yes. North American agencies averaged 18% turnover in 2024 (Campaign US), against a 13.0% U.S. all-industry voluntary turnover average (Mercer, 2025). At the industry level, professional services, which includes agencies and consultancies, topped LinkedIn's turnover rankings for 2021 to 2022, ahead of tech and media at 12.9% and a 10.6% global average. LinkedIn's earlier 2018 analysis put marketing roles at 17%, the highest of any job function.
How much does it cost an agency to replace an employee?
Gallup's cross-industry benchmark puts replacement cost at one-half to two times the departing employee's annual salary, and calls that conservative. Applied to the average U.S. marketing account manager salary of $86,882 (Glassdoor, 2026), one departure conservatively costs about $43,000, before counting client disruption. SHRM's 2025 benchmark puts the direct cost per non-executive hire at $5,475.
Why do agency employees quit?
The 4A's and LinkedIn study of agency leavers found 54% cited little opportunity for advancement, 50% wanted more challenging work, 46% were dissatisfied with leadership, and 45% cited pay. Burnout compounds it: 70% of media, marketing, and creative professionals reported burnout in the past year (Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024, Australia).
How long does it take to fill an agency role?
There's no reliable agency-specific benchmark. But the professional services industry averages 47 days to hire, above the 44-day global average, according to the Josh Bersin Company and AMS Time-to-Hire Factbook (2023).
Sources & Methodology
Statistics on this page are drawn from the primary sources below. Cross-industry and non-US figures are labeled inline. Glassdoor figures are total-pay estimates (base plus variable pay) as shown on 21 September 2026; they move month to month and skew above base-salary-only surveys. Two computed figures (the per-agency turnover cost and its share of profit) combine sources and are labeled "Computed from." Every quote on this page was checked against the live source page before publication.
IPA, Agency Census 2024 (UK), news release with turnover and vacancy figures: https://ipa.co.uk/news/agency-census-2024 ; report page: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/agency-census-2024
Campaign US, Agency Performance Review 2025: Talent trends at North American agencies: https://www.campaignlive.com/article/agency-performance-review-2025-talent-trends-north-american-agencies/1913155
LinkedIn Talent Blog, Industries with the Highest (and Lowest) Turnover Rates (2022 data): https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/industries-with-the-highest-turnover-rates
LinkedIn, 2018 job-function turnover analysis (marketing 17%), as reported by IQ Partners: https://www.iqpartners.com/blog/marketing-jobs-have-the-highest-turnover-rate/ ; LinkedIn's replacement post (2022): https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-analytics/types-of-jobs-with-most-turnover
4A's and LinkedIn, joint agency turnover study (2016), via Marketing Dive: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/turnover-in-advertising-is-higher-than-related-industries-study/416130/
Gallup, This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion (2019): https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-problem-costs-businesses-trillion.aspx
SHRM, The Real Costs of Recruitment (2022 benchmarking): https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/real-costs-recruitment ; SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports (October 2025): https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/shrm-releases-2025-benchmarking-reports--how-does-your-organizat
Glassdoor, U.S. salary pages for marketing account manager, creative director, executive creative director, media buyer, digital media buyer, SEO specialist, and junior SEO specialist (checked September 2026): https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/
Mercer, 2025 US Turnover Survey (2,617 organizations): https://www.imercer.com/articleinsights/workforce-turnover-trends
MBO Partners, State of Independence in America, 15th annual (2025): https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence ; 2024 report: https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence/2024-report
Upwork, Freelance Forward 2023 (N=3,000): https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2023-research-report
Josh Bersin Company and AMS, Talent Climate: Time-to-Hire Benchmark Factbook (2023): https://joshbersin.com/time-to-hire-benchmark-factbook/ ; release with the day counts: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-shows-that-hiring-is-harder-than-ever-time-to-hire-increasing-significantly-for-almost-all-roles-301839785.html
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Ad Age Datacenter, U.S. ad employment fell 1,500 jobs in December 2024 (January 2025): https://adage.com/article/datacenter/us-ad-employment-fell-1500-jobs-december-2024/2598091
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Advertising Sales Agents (2025 to 2035 edition): https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/advertising-sales-agents.htm
Mentally-Healthy Survey 2024 (Never Not Creative, supported by UnLtd, Australia), via Campaign Brief: https://campaignbrief.com/mentally-healthy-survey-2024-reveals-70-of-industry-has-experienced-burnout/
Advertising Association, All In Census 2025 (UK): https://adassoc.org.uk/our-work/2025-all-in-census-tracks-industrys-steady-progress-on-talent-and-inclusion/ ; data page: https://advertisingallin.co.uk/all-in-census-data/
Promethean Research, 2026 State of Digital Services (N=119) and Digital Agency Industry Report (2026): https://prometheanresearch.com/
Agency Management Institute, 55:25:20 agency financial benchmark: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/
About the author
David Hoos
Founder, Haus Advisors
David Hoos works with the owners of founder-led software and technical services agencies that have built real businesses but haven't yet built the systems that let those businesses run without them. Haus Advisors helps move the pipeline, the reputation, and the follow-up that currently live in the founder into the business, so the agency is worth more whether or not it's ever sold. He hosts the Behind the Agency podcast.
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