Meetings Emerge as Leading Indicator of Higher Earnings, New Academic Study Reveals

Having a packed calendar full of meetings? A new working paper suggests that the employees spending the most time in meetings could also be the ones seeing the biggest pay gains.

Researchers at Harvard University and the Norwegian School of Economics published a new working paper this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Meetings.” The paper “provides the first large-scale economic evidence on workplace meetings” by conducting “an original survey of more than 9,000 workers.”

The team compared meetings to “the broccoli of work” since employees widely dislike them yet they remain “probably good for us anyway.” They discovered meetings are costly and time‑intensive, consuming an average of 12 % of work hours across sampled professionals.

When analyzing daily task distributions—ranging from email correspondence to focused solitary effort—the frequency and intensity of meetings stood out as the single strongest predictor of job wage growth among examined activities.

Harvard economist David Deming explained that firms with higher meeting volumes generally outperform competitors, and workers who participate more frequently tend to experience greater salary increases and accelerated career advancement.

In essence, recurring syncs, brainstorming sessions, and quick‑sync meetings may serve as signals that individuals are becoming increasingly valuable to their organizations.

Having more meetings will not automatically increase your pay

Additional meetings alone are not a shortcut to a larger paycheck. While the study uncovers a clear relationship between meeting load and compensation, it does not prove that simply adding attendees or calendar invites triggers wage hikes. Correlation does not imply causation.

Instead, heavy meeting schedules often accompany work that is inherently complex and requires coordinated execution across multiple dimensions. Deming noted that employees dedicate longer session durations precisely when they hold central positions in company operations or when their responsibilities demand specialized expertise and cross‑functional collaboration.

The authors tracked several workplace interaction metrics linked to salary growth, including cumulative meeting time, meet frequency on in‑office days, and levels of active collaboration. Among these indicators, time spent in meetings demonstrated the most robust and straightforward connection to earned income.

“Meetings are the price we pay to organize and coordinate highly specialized, complex production,” Deming observed. “Regardless of whether it involves client deliverables, product shipping, or other demanding outcomes, many teams possess intricate work streams that can only come together through scheduled discussions.”

Although the research establishes a measurable association between participation and earnings, skepticism remains prevalent. Sixty percent of regular meeting attendees allocate over one hour each day to such gatherings, and a recent Resume Now survey found that roughly 64 percent consider only half or fewer of their meetings truly productive.

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