Media & Events Hiring Split: Marketing Roles Ramp Up, Media Sales Slide Continues

The media and events job market is diverging sharply along role lines: marketing hiring is ramping up even as media sales recruitment continues to slide. That is the central finding of the latest Media & Events job market update from B&T, an Australian trade publication covering the advertising, media and marketing sectors.

The headline split matters for anyone pricing their skills in this market. Marketing roles are gaining hiring momentum, while media sales positions keep contracting — two opposite trajectories inside one industry cluster, tracked in the same reporting period.

What does the divergence mean for jobseekers?

For professionals in the media and events cluster, the report's signal is directional rather than motivational. Candidates with marketing skill sets face strengthening demand; candidates whose experience sits primarily in media sales face a shrinking pool of openings.

This has practical consequences:

• Marketing specialists can negotiate from a stronger position as demand for their roles ramps up.
• Media sales professionals may need to reposition — marketing-adjacent skills now map onto the growing side of the market.
• Employers in events and media face asymmetric hiring conditions depending on the function they are recruiting for.

How does the split fit the sector's broader picture?

The B&T update covers the media and events job market as a single tracked category, and the divergence suggests the category is no longer moving as one block. Marketing's ramp-up and media sales' continued slide indicate that sector-level averages conceal materially different conditions at the role level.

The word "continues" in the report's framing matters: media sales is not experiencing a one-off dip but an ongoing decline, while marketing's ramp-up represents an acceleration rather than a recovery to prior levels.

What should readers watch next?

B&T publishes periodic job market updates for the media and events sector, so the durability of both trends — whether marketing's ramp-up holds and whether media sales' slide deepens or stabilises — should become clearer in the outlet's next installment.