This page organizes selected U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for occupations relevant to Kelvaro’s core industries. The figures are employee wage estimates for May 2025; they are not freelance quotes, contractor rate cards, union scales, or recommendations about what any business should pay.
BLS released the May 2025 OEWS national estimates on 2026-05-15. Kelvaro checked the source values below on September 9, 2026. BLS publishes broader national, state, metro-area, and industry-specific tables; use those tables when geography or industry mix materially affects your planning.
| Occupation | SOC | Employment | Mean hourly | Median hourly | Mean annual | Relevant verticals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meeting, convention, and event planners | 13-1121 | 142,860 | $31.98 | $29.41 | $66,520.00 | Event production, Wedding planning |
| Producers and directors | 27-2012 | 143,120 | $54.47 | $43.44 | $113,300.00 | Event production, Film, video & commercial production |
| Sound engineering technicians | 27-4014 | 13,080 | $39.13 | $35.16 | $81,390.00 | Event production, Film, video & commercial production |
| Lighting technicians | 27-4015 | 8,900 | $37.68 | $32.72 | $78,380.00 | Event production, Film, video & commercial production |
| Camera operators, television, video, and film | 27-4031 | 21,550 | $40.01 | $36.05 | $83,210.00 | Film, video & commercial production |
| Tour and travel guides | 39-7012 | 53,500 | $21.02 | $18.33 | $43,720.00 | Tours & experiences |
| Captains, mates, and pilots of water vessels | 53-5021 | 36,850 | $49.87 | $44.45 | $103,720.00 | Charter & marine |
Treat the table as a labor-market orientation point. A national employee median can help you ask better budgeting questions, but it does not include every factor that can change a contractor or project rate: geography, experience, short-notice work, equipment, travel, insurance, nonbillable time, overtime rules, union agreements, licensing requirements, seasonality, or the economics of an independent business.
The accompanying calculator therefore does not “convert” BLS wages into a recommended freelance rate. It simply lets you apply the published employee mean or median to your own headcount, hours, and days so you can compare a transparent public reference with the actual rate assumptions in your project budget.
Kelvaro’s Contractor Payment Operations Benchmark measures workflow friction such as onboarding, approvals, exceptions, and reconciliation. It intentionally does not collect exact contractor pay records. This BLS reference uses a separate public evidence source so labor-market context is not mixed with Kelvaro survey responses or represented as proprietary compensation data.
Use the labor-market reference calculator for a neutral starting point, then use Kelvaro’s industry-specific calculators to model the actual rates, expenses, and crew assumptions for your job.
Open the reference calculator →