Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners worker at that point in the distribution, so $77,150 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 134,670 Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners jobs in May 2024, which is 0.09% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 3.87, meaning the occupation holds 3.87 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 17,800 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 29.1% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $35,990 or less, and one in ten earns $101,310 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $65,320. The mean ($65,090) versus median ($59,440) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners runs from the $127,160 median in Maine down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (17,800 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners stands number 225 by employment and number 417 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Business and Financial Operations Occupations, the group median wage is $78,420 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 24% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.3% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 15 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $59,440, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 10,290 jobs, 7.6% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $44,420 a year, against $95,510 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $59,440 works out to $4,953 a month before taxes, $2,286 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,143 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($45,610) to the 75th ($77,150) is worth $31,540 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $65,384 would sit between the median ($59,440) and the 75th percentile ($77,150), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $45,610, is $13,830 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Business and Financial Operations Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Financial Risk Specialists, Tax Examiners and Collectors, and Revenue Agents, Budget Analysts, Credit Counselors, Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes, Insurance Appraisers, Auto Damage. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.