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, not the hourly one.

The formula multiplies the number of people by the average salary and the cost basis, divides by 2,080 working hours a year to get an hourly rate for the whole room, then scales that rate by how long the meeting runs and by how often it happens over a year. Base salary alone gives a conservative number, the wage cost only. Switching the cost basis to Loaded multiplies each salary by 1.45 first, the same figure the live meter uses for benefits and overhead from the BLS employer cost release, before the rest of the math runs.

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.

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 its hourly rate is lower. 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 number 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 attendee count 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.

For the meeting on the calendar right now, the live meter at dollarspersecond.com counts the cost in real time while the room sits there, which is the number worth watching during a meeting instead of after it.