Public & Private Sector Weekly Earnings Details and Statistics

Scofflaw

These figures are from 2008! They do not include the reductions in public sector pay since then.

I thought I might as well put this up as one table, since the wrangling often revolves around it - all data is from the CSO (thanks to nesf):

Sector|1999|2000|2001|2002|2003|2004|2005|2006|2007|2008
Distribution and business services (50-64, 70-74)|466.2|505.01|545.41|563.58|589.45|619.41|644.7|682.03|709.2|728.61
Motor trades (50)|391.32|430.5|467.68|469.86|502.15|541.04|572.18|601.54|638.4|636.75
Wholesale trade (51)|489.61|527.2|558|583.73|598.76|626.38|665.48|703.26|711.65|737.67
Retail trade (52)|427.89|487.06|541.78|585.88|620.84|639.01|660.43|705.05|742.24|770.2
Business services (55-64, 70-74)|480.55|513.52|551.46|561.43|585.53|619.01|642.86|678.99|705.34|723.62
Hotels and restaurants (55)|303.81|322.02|339.26|347.06|367.45|395.77|418.67|431.16|446.34|465.23
Land transport (60)|464.44|502.83|553.92|568.07|591.41|624.16|651.54|680.67|711.19|742.88
Other business activities (74)|491.64|534.85|575.78|595.2|630.8|656.89|672.97|704.63|726.52|726.6
Post and telecommunications (64)|646.53|672.06|722.33|736.16|744.12|781.5|799.88|..|..|..
Real estate, renting of machinery and equipment|451.56|487.66|538.87|594.69|640.67|709.98|761.94|830.39|856|863.65
Computing activities, research and development |563.61|613.93|642.63|626.94|645.84|676.92|708.09|720.72|767.15|824.23
Wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles, personal and household goods (50-52)|440.46|489.59|534.42|567.5|596.58|620.12|647.9|687.37|716.04|737.32
Water and air transport, supporting transport and travel agent activities (61-63)|508.85|535.65|591.07|593.42|655.23|701.44|736.62|..|..|.
Financial Institutions|558.74|593.31|658.1|686.91|698.16|737.52|775.55|829.25|..|..
Manufacturing Industries|396.55|423.24|456.97|483.02|511.78|534.24|557.57|575.21|..|..
||||||||||
Civil Service|..|573.57|633.1|656.19|681.03|744.24|795.87|838.35|877.76|916.06
||||||||||
Prison Officers|..|949.22|1043.98|1093.33|1106.71|1067.6|1117.93|1149.12|1189.67|1196.5
Administrative Civil Servants|..|538.58|597.87|621.87|648.63|724.97|776.24|819.48|860.35|898.89
Industrial Civil Servants|..|460.96|506.99|524.22|534.22|562.57|627.63|676.2|691|742.85
Others in the Public Sector|..|309.49|384.93|479.81|432.48|478.03|430.53|418.05|423.01|483.56
Defence|..|505.79|548.77|587.96|609.24|665.3|690.16|732.26|767.01|808.45
An Garda Siochana|..|837.87|939.67|945.21|959.86|1058.75|1096.77|1170.25|1205.95|1207.24
Education|..|644.47|698.44|718.93|743.41|809.16|856.66|879.9|921|946.47
Primary education|..|690.35|717.08|716.88|712.49|765.14|812.2|931.11|865.3|887.17
Secondary education (excl. VECs & ITs)|..|685.02|753.21|801.19|848.41|935.58|970.37|998.67|1045.76|1078.46
Third level education (excl. VECs & ITs)|..|627.1|691.84|762.92|799.82|875.26|907.86|949.21|1020.06|1064.7
VECs and Institutes of Technology|..|560.36|628.28|627.36|669.04|734.46|801.04|817.71|846.35|861.78
Regional Bodies|..|499.56|558.9|578.16|608.44|666.34|734.87|772.25|817.55|837.81
Local Authorities|..|494.39|551.71|573.46|605.91|663.85|731.62|769.01|814.25|833.37
Non-Local Authority Regional Bodies|..|615.3|739.34|731.04|787.69|819.83|844.9|879.84|829.93|1001.89
Semi-State Companies|..|634.98|696.99|766.06|814.87|867.67|908.63|964.7|1008.16|1050.11
Commercial Semi-State Companies|..|632.81|697.18|773.45|825.36|874.48|913.84|974.67|1021.86|1066.71
Non-Commercial Semi-State Companies|..|646.29|697.1|731.9|765.96|836.23|885.09|920.5|955.07|1003.1
Public Sector (excluding Health)|..|611.54|671.78|704.28|734.86|797.09|844.16|882.02|922.46|948.91
An Garda Siochana (excl. overtime)|..|737.8|790.4|836.57|862.36|920.76|966.48|983.6|1003.98|1076.68


I appreciate those are average earnings, and will conceal large variations in both public and private sectors, so please don't anyone take it personally. However, it can safely be said that with the exception of the "Others in the Public Sector" category - which includes TDs, Garda students, and CSO temporary field staff, there is no area within the public sector which on average has done badly out of the boom. If we took straight averages of those figures (not particularly accurate), the public sector in 2000 enjoyed a 20.75% advantage over the private sector, which rose to a 30.75% advantage by 2008.

To put that in context - if you were on €40K in the public sector in 2008, then your private sector equivalent was probably on €30K.

It would be instructive - and alas, I doubt the figures are available - to see what difference there is in non-mortgage debt between private and public sector households.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Thread stuck so as to end the unceasing quibbling about earnings by different groups! These are the stats, I'm explaining exactly what they mean further down - nesf

Nehaxak

As you say, they're average figures but wow, I'm actually shocked at how high the figures are for both the Garda and Prison officers.

Just to clarify though, are those figures given, before or after taxes ?

Anyone else able to make an educated guess at the adjustments to the figures required in the chart in regards pension levy deductions for the public sector and if those deductions might have impacted the figures significantly at all ?

Are them figures for real, I use to be in the retail trade over a year ago and I wasn't even getting the 1999 figure of 427.89, I was taking home €340 a week.

nesf

Nehaxak wrote: »

Just to clarify though, are those figures given, before or after taxes ?

Before taxes, levies or any deductions.

Jack Daniels I

jaysus i work 4 nights a week in a supposedly higher paying multinational and my take home is 510 after (huge) taxes.

frankly some of those figures are disgusting...guards and prison officers clearing a grand a week!! they can **** right off!

nesf

What these numbers are and what these numbers aren't:

These are averages, that means they aren't what the average Garda or whatever is paid!

To illustrate this point consider the following example:

4 guys earning 20K a year
1 guy earning 100K a year

Average wage = 36K a year.

Extreme example but you get the idea I hope. The median wage in the above example (the wage the "middle" guy gets paid) would be 20K. Most people confuse average and median. So the average wage in my example is 36K a year but the average guy earns 20K a year. Remember this distinction for all other average earnings statistics!

Now the CSO use weighted averages to dictate average earnings so let's look at another example:

Managers (5): average of 100K a year
Clerical staff (20): average of 20K a year

A simple average of the averages gives an average wage of 60K a year ((100+20)/2). A weighted average gives 36K a year ((100*5 + 20*20)/(20+5)). This is how the average for a sector is calculated! Employees are broken up into broad categories like Clerical, Managerial, Technical and so on and averaged first amongst themselves and then a weighted average is used to combine the different numbers.

In the above example note how just a quarter of workers earning a very high salary can distort the numbers. Always beware of this when looking at average earnings numbers!




These numbers are useful for looking at general differences in pay rates and pay inflation. They are not useful for figuring out what the average guy gets paid unless you know a lot about the structure of the data and how many big earners there are bumping the average up by so much.


Specifically the following is applied to Public Sector averages:

Average weekly earnings reflect the mix of employees on different pay rates.
Average weekly earnings are calculated by:

deriving average weekly earnings for each staff category, distinguished by each relevant organisation;

weighting these earnings by employment in each category to derive the average weekly earnings for each relevant organisation;

weighting these weekly earnings by the employment of relevant organisation to obtain the average weekly earnings for each sector;

weighting the sectoral average weekly earnings by the total employment of all organisations in the sector to obtain the overall quarterly average weekly earnings.

Weighted average like I explained above pretty much. This is extremely important to bear in mind.

Weighting for non-public sector: They do a weighted average by staff category again so management wages contribute less to the average than clerical if there are more clerical staff in a sector than managers and so on.


Earnings are defined as:

Earnings represents the gross amount (before deduction of tax, PRSI, superannuation) payable by
the organisation to its employees. It includes:

Normal wages, salaries and overtime;
taxable allowances, regular bonuses and commissions;
holiday or sick pay for the period in question.

It excludes:
employer's PRSI;
redundancy payments and back-pay.

nesf

A comparison of mean (average) to median (average guy) hourly pay broken up by number of years employed:




Paid Hours of Work broken up by NACE Sector for 2007:




Median Wage for Private (Red) versus Public (Blue) Sector workers broken by category (The title on the graph is wrong, it only compares median wage)

nesf

Mean and Median Hourly Wages for Health, Public Admin & Defence (Civil Service+Gardaí+Army etc) and Education in 2007:

Red is mean, Blue is median.

Scofflaw

I suspect structural differences between the public and private sector make a significant difference to the average earnings. The private sector is relatively 'flat' these days, but with a lot of detail - relatively few distinct rungs on the ladder, a good deal of variation on any given broad rung. The public sector, on the other hand, has a better defined ladder, with more similarity at each rung.

Tht seems to me to make it likely that a private sector organisation of 20 people is likely to consist of, say:

16 ordinary employees
3 middle management/professional
1 senior management

The comparable structure for the civil service, from my experience, is more likely to be something like this:

9 ordinary employees
4 supervisory employees
3 junior management/specialists
3 middle management/professional
1 senior management

That's going to inflate the average salary, even if we assume similar pay rates at equivalent levels. That may not be immediately obvious, so here's how it works:

Employee|Numbers|Salary|Weighted Total
ordinary employees|9|20000|180000
supervisory employees|4|30000|120000
junior management/specialists|3|40000|120000
middle management/professional|3|50000|150000
senior management|1|100000|100000
Public Sector Average|||33500
|||
ordinary employees|16|20000|320000
middle management/professional|3|50000|150000
senior management|1|100000|100000
Private Sector Average|||28500


So, even though the guy doing the same job in each sector is paid the same, the averages are thrown off by the shape of the pyramid in each. In fact, I've more or less accidentally recreated the original public-private sector gap of 20% there.

This is, by the way, one of the reasons that corporations flattened their structures about 20 years ago, because the wage bill for the second structure is that 20% larger. Prior to that, most companies had very similar structures to the civil service, with extensive and well-marked career ladders - a concept that is now almost totally gone from the private sector.

cordially,
Scofflaw

nesf

Scofflaw wrote: »

I suspect structural differences between the public and private sector make a significant difference to the average earnings. The private sector is relatively 'flat' these days, but with a lot of detail - relatively few distinct rungs on the ladder, a good deal of variation on any given broad rung. The public sector, on the other hand, has a better defined ladder, with more similarity at each rung.

Tht seems to me to make it likely that a private sector organisation of 20 people is likely to consist of, say:

16 ordinary employees
3 middle management/professional
1 senior management

The comparable structure for the civil service, from my experience, is more likely to be something like this:

9 ordinary employees
4 supervisory employees
3 junior management/specialists
3 middle management/professional
1 senior management

That's going to inflate the average salary, even if we assume similar pay rates at equivalent levels. That may not be immediately obvious, so here's how it works:

Employee|Numbers|Salary|Weighted Total
ordinary employees|9|20000|180000
supervisory employees|4|30000|120000
junior management/specialists|3|40000|120000
middle management/professional|3|50000|150000
senior management|1|100000|100000
Public Sector Average|||33500
|||
ordinary employees|16|20000|320000
middle management/professional|3|50000|150000
senior management|1|100000|100000
Private Sector Average|||28500


So, even though the guy doing the same job in each sector is paid the same, the averages are thrown off by the shape of the pyramid in each. In fact, I've more or less accidentally recreated the original public-private sector gap of 20% there.

This is, by the way, one of the reasons that corporations flattened their structures about 20 years ago, because the wage bill for the second structure is that 20% larger. Prior to that, most companies had very similar structures to the civil service, with extensive and well-marked career ladders - a concept that is now almost totally gone from the private sector.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Factor in the median wage difference for the Managerial sector from the graph above and you have a good explanation of where the most fat is to be trimmed from in the public sector.

Tipp Man

Nesf and Scofflaw

Absolutely tremendous work from both of you, this is a brilliant reference point, thanks for taking the time to do it

P.S you should have done it months ago and saved a lot of pages on this board:D

nesf

Riskymove wrote: »

Mods

might I suggest you lock this thread or else remove these posts....otherwise the excellent information is going to be overwhelmed by more pages of the same old same old

Agreed. Guys, seriously, if ye keep at each others' throats like this I will start handing out bans. Don't spill over the same crap into every thread we start on here please.

All non informational posts after mine above have been deleted this thread will now contain only facts about public and private sector earnings.
Anyone who has information that they'd like to see added here can PM me and I'll add it and attribute it to you. Thanks.

nesf

Teachers

1) Incremental Credit - A teacher who has studied for four years, starts on point 3 of the incremental credit scale. All teachers have 4 years of study.
2) For a degree + HDip you are awarded an additional E2561 (both degrees pass) - E6476 (both degrees honours. Someone with a doctoral degree gets more again.

The minimum starting salary for a teacher is therefore E37,468. The maximum starting salary for a teacher is E41,383.

One year contracts, maternity leave coverage etc. count towards incremental credit. Lack of permanency in your job does not affect your incremental credit.

For qualified teachers who work part time hours. A full teaching load of 22 hours per week, 33 weeks per year at the standard rate of €49.60 per hour, gives an annual FTE salary of E36,009.

Teaching salaries rise by an average of E1.5K a year for the first ten years. That figure excludes inflation related pay rises. They rise by an average of E1K a year thereafter until the top point of the salary scale is reached.

Nurses

The starting salary for a nurse is E31,875.
Additional payments are available for working from 6pm - 8pm (1+1/6)
8pm - 8am (1+1/4)
Saturdays - flat rate of E15 per day
Sundays and public holidays - 2

Based on a rota of 3/4 of time spent on day shifts (which incorporate some extra time hours) and 1/4 on night shifts, a nurse can expect to earn about 1.2 times their base salary before any additional overtime is taken on.

This brings the starting salary for a nurse to E39,000 or thereabouts. This rises to E57,000 after 13 years.

Garda

The starting salary for a Garda on attestation is E27,098. An additonal payment of E4162 in rent allowance is also payable, which brings the wage to E31,260

Additional payments are available for working from 6pm - 8pm (1+1/6)
8pm - 8am (1+1/4)
Saturdays - flat rate of E15 per day
Sundays and public holidays - 2

Based on a rota of 1 early, 1 late, 1 night, 1 off, a Garda can expect to earn about 20% higher than their base salary before any additional overtime is added.

This brings the starting salary for a Garda to E36,583 on attestation and E39K by the end of the first year, rising to E62K after 17 years service.

nesf

Substitute teachers pay is calculated in the following way.
the gross salary is divided by 167 (the number of teaching days per year) and the resulting answer is divided by 4.5 ( the number of hours per teaching day based on a 5 day teaching week of 22 weeks)

E.g. teacher in his/her third year earning 44,500 gross would receive:
44,500/165 = 266.47/4.5 = €59.22 per hour.

Scofflaw

Unstuck, as too out of date to be of further value. May be replaced.

moderately,
Scofflaw