Non-Jobs in the Society page of the Guardian
A bit of 2003/2004 is about to leap into 2007 - I'm going to take issue with a Cuthie post. This one, and in particular this question.
Q. Why should these [positions advertised in the Guardian's Society section] positions pay an average salary that is £11,400 more than the average private sector job?
First, let's note there are national statistics, and they say that in 2004 the mean full-time salary in the public sector was £499.5/week and in the private sector, £509/week. Essentially no difference then.
So the £11,400 difference Peter has come up is not due to a diffence in public/private salaries, but a difference in samples (one the Guardian's Society page, and the other the entire country. It's clear it was unlikely that Society was typical of the public sector - the entire TPA extrapolation is for a wage bill of £767m, whereas the entire sector must be (a rough guess) more like £125bn (6mn multiplied by £25,000 pa). It's only slightly more than half a percent.
On the other hand Peter's question was about Society, not the public sector. So then why do these positions in Society pay more than the UK average?
A. Because jobs that are advertised in national newspapers pay more than the average.
Let's give another example. I surveyed last week's Economist for jobs that gave salaries, and came up with average salaries for the private sector of £46k (only three, most of them were too well paid to say), the public sector of £42k (mainly the international public sector), and academia of £41k. These are all higher than average salaries in those areas.
So the sampling method is wrong. It needs to be changed to compare public sector jobs advertised in Society to private sector jobs advertised in Society or other newspapers (whilst they're at it, I suggest that the TPA, if it believes it is going to be around this time next year, just choose a few more months as well as November (say February) or even one week per month, just to be on the safe side).
That jobs advertised in national newspapers aren't average answers the other two questions as well, I would suggest. Particularly if those perks themselves aren't average - taken together they seem a little too much for a £36k job, but not for jobs of around £50k.
Labels: economics
posted by Matthew @ 1/22/2007 08:47:00 PM
Comments: 4
