What Are You Actually Worth? A Better Way to Think About Pay in the Events Industry
By Tracy Judge, Founder & CEO, Soundings
A recent Skift Meetings analysis compared salary data from 10 different sources and found just how difficult it can be to answer a seemingly simple question: What should an event professional make? We recently looked at what those inconsistencies mean for organizations trying to benchmark compensation.
If you’ve ever tried to figure out what you should be making in the events industry, you’ve probably done what most of us do: search your title, find a salary range, and immediately wonder whether you’re underpaid, overpaid, or looking at numbers that have absolutely nothing to do with your job.
That’s because your title is only part of the story.
Two people can both be called Event Manager and have dramatically different responsibilities. One might coordinate logistics for a handful of meetings each year. Another might own six-figure budgets, manage vendors and teams, advise senior leaders, and make decisions that directly affect revenue.
The same thing happens in freelance work. Two producers might have the same title and completely different levels of responsibility, expertise, and client impact.
So instead of asking, “What does someone with my title make?” there’s a better question:
What is the work I actually do worth?
Start with scope, not title
Take your job description out of the equation for a moment and look at what you actually own.
Do you manage a budget? Lead people or vendors? Make strategic decisions? Own client relationships? Solve problems independently? Manage risk? Influence revenue? Have specialized expertise that would be difficult to replace?
Those responsibilities tell you much more about the level at which you’re operating than your title does.
This matters especially in events, where roles tend to expand over time. You may have been hired to do one thing and gradually become responsible for five others without your title or compensation changing along with them.
Documenting that evolution gives you something much more useful than a generic salary benchmark: evidence of your actual scope.
Look at the value around the work
Not every contribution shows up neatly on a job description.
Maybe you’re the person who can walk into a chaotic situation and get everyone aligned. Maybe clients specifically ask to work with you. Maybe you’ve built processes that save your team hours every week. Maybe your expertise prevents expensive mistakes before anyone else sees them coming.
Those things have value.
For employees, that means thinking beyond the tasks you complete and identifying the outcomes you influence.
For freelancers, it’s even more important. Clients aren’t simply buying your hours. They’re buying the experience, judgment, efficiency, relationships, and specialized knowledge you bring to those hours.
A highly experienced freelancer might solve in two hours what once took them eight. That doesn’t make their work less valuable because it took less time.
If you're an employee, benchmark the job you're actually doing
Salary data can still be useful. Just don’t treat the first number you find as a verdict on what you should earn.
Look for roles that resemble your actual scope, even if the titles aren't identical. Consider company size, industry, location, level of responsibility, team leadership, budget ownership, specialized skills, and whether your work contributes directly to revenue or business strategy.
Then look at the entire opportunity.
Salary matters, but so do benefits, flexibility, stability, advancement, professional development, workload, travel expectations, autonomy, and the kind of work you get to do.
A higher salary doesn't automatically make one opportunity better. The goal is to understand what matters to you and evaluate compensation within that bigger picture.
If you're a freelancer, salary isn't your rate
This is where traditional salary comparisons can become especially misleading.
A $100,000 salary does not translate neatly into a $48 hourly freelance rate.
An independent professional has to account for things an employer normally absorbs: unpaid administrative time, business development, equipment, software, insurance, taxes, benefits, vacation, gaps between projects, and the simple reality that not every working hour is billable.
Your rate also reflects something salary data struggles to capture: the flexibility you're providing the client.
A company may need your expertise for 40 hours rather than 40 hours a week. They can bring you in when the need exists without carrying that role year-round. That flexibility has value too.
Instead of asking, “What would someone doing this make as an employee?” ask:
What rate makes this work sustainable for my business, appropriate for my experience, and worthwhile for me to take on?
Build your own compensation framework
Whether you’re employed or independent, the most useful benchmark may ultimately be your own.
Know your minimum. Know what responsibilities increase your value. Know what kind of work you want more of. Know what tradeoffs you're willing to make and which ones you're not.
And revisit those answers regularly.
Your experience changes. Your responsibilities change. The market changes. Technology changes. Your life changes.
Your compensation expectations should be allowed to change too.
There may never be one perfect salary report that tells every event professional exactly what they're worth.
That's okay.
A benchmark can give you context. It shouldn't make the decision for you.
The better you understand the scope of your work, the value you create, and what makes an opportunity worthwhile to you, the less you have to rely on someone else's number to tell you what you should be earning.
Thanks to Barbara at Skift for bringing this topic to the surface. Read her full piece here: Meeting Planner Salaries: Why They Never Agree