In the future, everyone will consult

I was interested to learn (via Marketplace last night) about this Ad Age report on jobs on the marketing and media sectors. While the headline is about media jobs declining (shocked?), I was drawn to the stuff about commercial persuasion jobs.  “Employment in advertising/marketing-services …  broke a record in November,” rising to 769,000  jobs,  the piece says.

Among all the ad-related job sectors, the hot spot is marketing consulting. Employment in that field in December reached a record 148,500, accounting for the lion’s share of job gains over the past year in advertising and marketing services.

In fact, the article indicates that consultancy jobs are growing so sharply that they’ve made up for job  losses at ad agencies (down 10% from 2000) and PR agencies (down 11.5% since then).