Convention season enters the era of flexible work

Key takeaways

• Convention centers have been deploying flexible workers to deal with repeated peaks in demand for labor
  
• These peaks may correspond to weather patterns despite conventions mainly taking place indoors
• The most booked roles are low-skill positions like general labor and event setup/takedown
• But convention centers are increasingly using onsite captains to ensure that shifts go smoothly, paying them $30/hour or more
  

The spring convention and conference season is wrapping up, and this time there was a twist: the enormous involvement of flexible work. Convention centers across the United States and Canada posted thousands of shifts on the Instawork platform, offering insights into patterns of demand and specific needs. Here's a sampling of what we learned.

Conventions are seasonal, too

Recently we wrote about variation in the timing of wedding season across the United States, which unsurprisingly had a lot to do with the weather. Conventions and conferences typically happen indoors, but weather still matters; people usually prefer to visit places where the climate is mild. But unlike weddings, almost every big meeting is a "destination" event, so some metro areas are more popular than others.

This probably explains the pattern of convention season in the Las Vegas area. Here's the week-by-week pattern of demand for flexible labor there since April 1:

It looks like there was a pretty reliable peak near the middle of each month, though the peaks got smaller as Las Vegas started to heat up. (This week temperatures are hitting 100º!). The biggest events seem to be spread out, which could be by design.

The peaks were also spread out in the beautiful Seattle area, where they were also more frequent:

Seattle seemed to host a big convention every two or three weeks, with peaks in demand of similar size to those in the Las Vegas area. And the peaks got higher as temperatures climbed into the 60s and 70s.

Metropolitan areas with bigger swings in temperature had bigger swings in demand, too. For example, Chicago is frigid in the winter but gets into the 70s in May, which is when demand ramped up:

Demand for flexible labor at convention centers varied by the day of the week, too. In the New York and Los Angeles areas, the demand for flexible work was highest in the middle of the week. But in Las Vegas, demand was highest at the weekend.

With great responsibility comes great pay

Hourly pay for convention shifts also varies across the continent, and not always in obvious ways. Here are the average rates paid to our Pros in the most active metropolitan areas:

Hourly pay in Boston is usually among the highest in the nation, but it's only average for shifts at convention centers. In part that's because the most booked role in the Boston area – and also the highest-paying role – is a relatively low-skill position:

Indeed, there are some shifts at convention centers that offer much higher pay rates:

Our business partners are increasingly using onsite captains to supervise shifts at convention centers, ensuring that everything runs smoothly from clock-in to clock-out. These captains are among our most experienced Pros, and they're getting paid rates commensurate with their importance. We think they're worth every penny.

Realtime metrics

These metrics, derived from data aggregated across the Instawork platform, compare the two weeks starting 6/8/2023 to the previous two weeks. To control for the overall growth of the Instawork marketplace, only shifts involving businesses that booked shifts in both periods are included:

• $0.16 rise in hourly pay
• 0.5% point drop in share of short-notice shifts
• 1.4 hours rise in hours per existing worker

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