What a recurring meeting costs per hour and per year

A six-person meeting at a $75,000 average salary, one hour long, held every week, costs $216.35 each time it happens and $11,250 over a year. Nothing about that meeting looks expensive from inside the room. The yearly figure does. This page turns a recurring invite into both numbers at once, because the one that decides whether a standing meeting survives is the yearly figure rather than the hourly one.

How the number is worked out

Four steps. Multiply the number of people by the average salary and by the cost basis to get the room's annual wage cost. Divide by 2,080, the work hours in a year at 52 weeks of 40 hours, and you have what the room costs for one hour: $216.35 at the settings above. Multiply by the length in minutes over 60 to get the cost of one occurrence. Multiply by how often it happens to reach the yearly figure.

Base salary alone gives a conservative number, the wage cost only, and it is what this page opens on. Switching the cost basis to Loaded under More options multiplies each salary by 1.45 first, the same figure the meeting meter uses for benefits and overhead from the BLS employer cost release, before the rest of the arithmetic runs. The same weekly meeting on that basis costs $16,312.50 a year instead of $11,250.

Frequency is the lever

Hold the meeting itself fixed and change only how often it happens, and the yearly total moves more than any other input on this page. The same six people, the same $75,000 average, the same hour, costs $2,596 a year if it happens once a month, $11,250 a year if it happens weekly, and $56,250 a year if it happens every workday. Nothing about the meeting changed. Only the calendar did. That is why an hourly figure is close to useless for deciding whether to keep a standing meeting, and a yearly figure is not.

Shortening is the second lever and it is weaker than it looks. Cutting the default hour to 45 minutes saves a quarter of the yearly total, about $2,813. Dropping the meeting from weekly to monthly saves about $8,654. Cutting two people from the room saves a third. Rank the three levers in that order before arguing about the agenda.

Two meetings that are easy to confuse

An eight-person daily standup at a $120,000 average salary, loaded for benefits, thirty minutes long, costs $87,000 a year, even though each occurrence is only $334.62. A twelve-person planning session at a $70,000 average, also loaded, ninety minutes long but held once a month, costs $10,540 a year, roughly an eighth of the standup's total, even though its single occurrence is more expensive and lasts three times as long. The standup wins on frequency. The planning session loses on it. Ranking two meetings by their per-meeting cost alone, without checking how often each one actually happens, gets the order backward about as often as it gets it right.

What counts, and what does not

The number on this page is the wage cost of the time in the room: attendees times pay times hours, nothing else. It does not include the time spent preparing slides before the meeting or writing up notes after it, both of which are real and often larger than the meeting itself. It does not include what any attendee could have produced with that hour instead, since that depends entirely on the job the person actually does. It does not include the cost of a decision made badly because the wrong people were, or were not, in the room. Treat the figure as a floor on what the meeting costs, not the whole bill.

Mistakes that skew the number

The most common mistake is judging a meeting by its per-meeting cost alone and ignoring frequency, which the standup and the planning session above show getting the ranking backward. The second is entering everyone on the invite list rather than everyone who actually needs to attend, which inflates the headcount for a meeting most people show up to out of habit rather than necessity. The third is leaving the cost basis on Loaded when comparing this figure against a contractor's hourly rate, or on Base salary when comparing it against a hiring decision. The two bases answer different questions, and mixing them produces a comparison that looks precise and is not.

This page and the live meter

These are two tools for two moments. This one prices an invite across a year and is the number to bring to a calendar review or a budget conversation. The meeting meter on the home page prices the room you are sitting in right now, ticking upward while it runs, and is the number to put on the screen when a discussion has stopped going anywhere. The arithmetic underneath is identical; only the span of time differs.