The Island’s recently released pay figures are a case in point. They revealed that the average weekly wage is now £620, which amounts to £32,240 a year.
As soon as these figures were made public, there were predictable cries of astonishment from many members of the workforce.
They said, ‘I don’t earn anything like that’ – or words to the same effect. Astonishment would have been accompanied in some cases by a substantial blow to self-esteem.
It is, however, important for anyone considering the average pay figure to be aware of how, statistically speaking, wages and salaries are distributed in this Island. In a nutshell, the average is skewed upwards by the very considerable numbers of people earning very large amounts of money.
It is, therefore, entirely wrong for anyone to imagine that half the workforce earns below £32,240 a year and half are remunerated above that rate.
There are statistical measures which would more accurately reflect the distribution of payment across the workforce. Unfortunately, calculating the most revealing of these – the median – would
entail our statisticians having knowledge of every single salary or wage paid here, which is clearly not a practical proposition.
As matters stand, it would be just as well if everyone were to take average pay data with a pinch of salt, not because they are inaccurate but because, without proper interpretation, they can be misleading. In addition, if misinterpreted, they can be divisive and demoralising.
That said, gathering pay data remains a legitimate, necessary and even vital part of the work of the States Statistics Unit. The information gleaned from employers in the public and private sectors provides indicators of economic and social change that are invaluable when government frames policy.
Not very many years ago, too few reliable statistics were available in this Island. By dint of hard work, the Statistics Unit has put matters right. Its staff deserve our thanks for this. Moreover, when there is widespread misunderstanding of what figures mean, we should blame those who misunderstand, not those whose role it is to deliver the unadorned facts.
