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Average V Median wage Ireland?

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    #512
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747779#Comment_117747779

    The problem is that there is a widespread belief that if the "average" is 49k (that's what the current estimate seems to be) then that is what most are getting and if you are earning less than that you are sub-normal in income terms whereas in fact that is not true.

    If there was an announcement on the six o'clock news that although the "average" is 49k, most people don't earn anything like that amount, then the vast majority of ft workers earning maybe 750 per week might realise that they are not doing all that badly.

    The notion that it is impossible to get a fairly accurate estimate of the median ft income is not credible. But who want to campaign at election time by announcing that most ft workers earn, say, 37k?

    49k sounds so much more impressive.

    It's high time the Irish people demanded truth in respect of what MOST ft workers earn.



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    #513
    Podge_irl
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 26,077 Mod ✭✭✭✭Podge_irl


    It's high time the Irish people demanded truth in respect of what MOST ft workers earn.

    The median isn't going to tell you much about that either.



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    #514
    Geuze
    Registered Users Posts: 13,268 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    Eurostat publish median annual earnings data for FT workers.

    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/earnings/database

    In 2018, the figure is 40,074.

    EARN_SES_ANNUAL

    So we know what median annual earnings are in 2018.



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    #515
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117770997#Comment_117770997

    For some reason I couldn't locate this from your link. Could you possibly take a snapshot of where it says the median ft wage (2018) for an Irish worker is E40,074?



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    #516
    crossman47
    Registered Users Posts: 1,505 ✭✭✭crossman47


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117770997#Comment_117770997

    Back in February, I said:

    In 2018 for all workers, the median was 36k when the mean was 44k. Based on that, I would think the median for full time workers must be in the region of 38 to 41K. I don't think its possible for CSO to calculate a median as they base their data on aggregate data from employers. They van do it for all employees by using Revenue data.



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    #517
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    Only yesterday, Geuze stated that he knew that the median wage for ftw 2018 was E40,074. I've requested a screenshot of the data and hopefully it will be forthcoming soon.

    During the next election campaign we will probably be told that the average ft worker earns 49k (if may have risen to 50k by then). If nobody knows what the median wage is then the public should be reminded that the "average" and what most ft workers earn are two very different things.

    If the median ft wage were higher than the average (which it could be in certain circumstances) we would quickly be presented with the median figure and not the average.



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    #518
    Podge_irl
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 26,077 Mod ✭✭✭✭Podge_irl


    Here

    image.png
    image.png




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    #519
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117775230#Comment_117775230

    At last there seems to be a direct hit. This chart appears to tick all the boxes - it's full time workers, it's Ireland and it's the median wage.

    The figure is for 2018 but I reckon it won't have increased since then and if anything - given the effects of the pandemic on wages - the median figure will have decreased (though the "average" may have increased).

    So the ft workers of Ireland can now be confident that if they are earning around E770 p/w they are not sub-normal in wage terms.

    I hope the powers-that-be now take note of this figure and stop pretending that most Irish ft workers earn E940 p/w. because they don't.



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    #520
    crossman47
    Registered Users Posts: 1,505 ✭✭✭crossman47


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117775844#Comment_117775844

    Do you ever give up? Nobody ever said most Irish workers earn the mean salary.



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    #521
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117775859#Comment_117775859

    With respect, crossman, you need to focus. My argument along has been that most Irish ft workers do not earn the mean/average.

    Concentrate!



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    #522
    Sarn
    Registered Users Posts: 3,064 ✭✭✭Sarn


    Just to point out again that the median figure reported above is based on survey data collected by the CSO. The methodology used has been explained previously and will be the best that we have available.

    It is also difficult to know what effect the pandemic will have on the median wage. If people lost their jobs or moved to part time they would be removed from the FT survey.

    Would it be reasonable to think that a higher percentage of lower paid workers would have been affected? E.g. restaurant staff, hairdressers etc. The effect that PUP and other payments could make it even more difficult to work out. In reality though I would think that more people are worse off.



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    #523
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117776434#Comment_117776434

    Various methodologies, surveys etc. have been pointed out by a number of contributors but the E40,074 report was the first complete answer to the question "What is the median ft wage in Ireland?". Other contributions, without exception, had omissions of some kind so any suggestion that this question has been answered before is simply wrong. Some contributors seem to think the question has been answered before - but it hasn't - not fully answered.

    Yes, it is difficult to know how the pandemic will affect the average or median ft wage. My guess is that both the average and median since the pandemic will both rise because so many lower earners will be excluded. But it's hard to say.



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    #524
    Sarn
    Registered Users Posts: 3,064 ✭✭✭Sarn


    My point is that it is not the complete answer that you have claimed to be seeking all this time. It is based on the survey data obtained by the CSO, with all of the caveats that have been highlighted previously. This is not a different set of data, but is as good an answer as we will get.



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    #525
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117776941#Comment_117776941

    "What is the median ft wage in Ireland?". That was the question. What is incomplete about the answer given?



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    #526
    ckeng
    Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭ckeng



    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777092#Comment_117777092

    It's based on a statistical sample, not on the complete set of full time workers and their respective salaries. If you're happy with that then 40074 is the answer, but you've previously rejected answers based on samples...



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    #527
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117777351#Comment_117777351

    I never rejected any median figure which was presented together with a credible basis for it. Not even one time. Can you pinpoint where you think this happened?



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    #528
    ckeng
    Registered Users Posts: 71 ✭✭ckeng


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117669674#Comment_117669674

    The Eurostat data comes from the CSO. The CSO data comes from the household survey which you're not interested in.



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    #529
    twin_beacon
    Registered Users Posts: 1,241 ✭✭✭twin_beacon


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/116279120#Comment_116279120

    "if you want to see what people are earning, look up job.ie - and read the ads in the papers."

    jobs.ie and newspapers will not give you the full picture, for the most part it will have medium to low paid jobs. I'm a software engineer, and we are hiring at the moment. However we only use recruitment agencies that focus on IT related jobs. Our open jobs will be listed on our corporate web site and our agencies web site, but most of our hires comes from a recruitment agent either head hunting someone, or from a list of people they have with the qualifications that are looking to change job.



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    #530
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117779243#Comment_117779243

    "I never rejected any median figure which was presented together with a credible basis for it. Not even one time. Can you pinpoint where you think this happened?"

    You haven't pinpointed where a "median figure" was "presented together with a credible basis for it" prior to the 40074 estimate.



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    #531
    Geuze
    Registered Users Posts: 13,268 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    One thing that I find odd is that the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) obviously takes place here.

    Yet the CSO do not publish any data series titles SES.

    They publish earnings data under the heading Structural Earnings, I wonder is that the same survey?

    https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/earnings/structuralearnings/



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    #532
    Geuze
    Registered Users Posts: 13,268 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    I now see some more information on the SES in Ireland:

    https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/earnings/structureofearningssurvey/


    The survey size is 50,000 workers.



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    #533
    Geuze
    Registered Users Posts: 13,268 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    Benedict,

    this distribution and info may be helpful:

    https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/earnings/earnings-faqs/


    Q: The CSO Earnings and Labour Costs release contains average earnings data, how are these averages calculated? 

    A: The Earnings and Labour Costs quarterly release publishes statistics on average weekly and hourly earnings and labour costs where these average earnings figures are mean earnings. For example, average weekly earnings are calculated by summing the earnings of all employees in a sector and dividing by the sum of all the employees in that sector whereas average hourly earnings are calculated by summing the earnings of all employees in a sector and dividing by the sum of all hours worked by employees in the sector.

    As is typical in earnings distributions, a relatively small number of high earners result in a positively skewed earnings distribution of employees in Ireland. In a positively skewed earnings distribution, mean earnings are greater than median earnings as the mean is increased by those higher earners. In such cases median earnings (the middle earner in the economy or sector) may be a more reflective figure of the average earnings of employees in the economy or sector. Please see the graph below which illustrates the earnings distribution of employees in Ireland in 2018. This data is taken from the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources 2018 publication. This release produces both mean and median earnings statistics.

    The Earnings and Labour Costs release is based upon firm level earnings data which is used to produce mean earnings statistics and thus cannot produce median earnings statistics.



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    #534
    Geuze
    Registered Users Posts: 13,268 ✭✭✭✭Geuze


    Here is a chart of earnings distribution in 2018:

    Untitled Image




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    #535
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117785005#Comment_117785005

    I'm sure that the NACE (40074) figure is not perfect but at least they are emphatic when it comes to differentiating ft from pt and they give a firm figure - not just for Ireland but for a long list of countries. Unless NACE credibility is called into question, I think that their figure is the one to go for.

    There needs to be much more emphasis given in official circles to distinguishing between ft and pt. Even in the section you quoted the lines appear to be blurred. I quote "In such cases median earnings (the middle earner in the economy or sector) may be a more reflective figure of the average earnings of employees in the economy or sector". What is he talking about? Median earnings being "reflective" of average? I'd love to hear him proving that!



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    #536
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,331 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    It's not a particularly enlightening comment = the median is one kind of average, the others being the mean and the mode. I'm not sure what it means to say that that the median "is reflective of the average earnings" but, whatever it means, it must be equally true to say that the mean is reflective of the average earnings, and that the mode is reflective of the average earnings. Which is not a lot of help.

    Probably he would have done better not to have used the word "average" at all in this context. I suspect he meant something like "median earnings may be a more reflective figure of the typical/usual earnings of employees in the economy or sector".

    Whether you go with the mean, the median or the mode, most workers do not earn that figure - they earn either more or less than that figure. But if the individual worker wants to know how he is faring, relative to others in the economy or to others in his his sector, then the median for the economy or the sector is the most meaningful average figure for him.



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    #537
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117821550#Comment_117821550

    Politicians like to give the impression that every Tom Dick and Harry is earning more than the median because it looks good.

    They don't want to say "The average ft worker is getting 48k - but most ft workers don't get anything close to that".

    It's the truth - but it doesn't sound good!

    What will the "average person" be earning by the time of the next election? 50K maybe?



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    #538
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,331 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    The mean, the median and the mode all exist, and are used, because they are all useful in different ways. As I said, if you want to judge how you yourself are doing relative to other workers, the median is useful. But if you are looking at labour costs in the economy overall, the mean is much more relevant. Politicians tend to be looking at the bigger picture - the health of the overall economy, more than the welfare of the individual household - and so the mean will cross their desk/turn up in their briefings far more often. But voters listening to politicians tend to be focussed on their own situation. Hence the frequent misunderstandings.

    The solution, as identified about a zillion posts ago, is not to compel politicians to quote median figures, since to do their jobs properly they should in fact be focussed mostly on mean figures. It's to educate people about what the mean does and doesn't represent.



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    #539
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117825888#Comment_117825888

    You may well have pointed out the "solution" a "zillion" posts ago - but your "solution" was to a question nobody was asking!

    The quest all along has been to establish a credible median figure for ft workers and Podge supplied that a couple of weeks ago.

    Your "solution" (to "educate people") could hardly be described as an answer to "what's the median wage for ft workers?"



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    #540
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,331 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826258#Comment_117826258

    Pretty much from the get-go you've been banging on about how politicians use the mean figure - I think you first raise the point in post 3. The whole reason you've been looking for a median figure is because you think quoting the mean suggests that most workers earn close to the mean.



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    #541
    Benedict
    Registered Users Posts: 684 ✭✭✭Benedict


    https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117826285#Comment_117826285

    This is gobbledygook! Nothing personal but you've really lost the plot. You state - "The whole reason you've been looking for a median figure is because you think quoting the mean suggests that most workers earn close to the mean"? What on earth are you on about?



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