"Average wage £29,000"

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I've had an ad on my Facebook for one of those "your baby born on this day" type posters with today's stats, which includes the average wage of £29,000. I'm aware this is the average wage according to stats, but there were loads of comments saying that was wrong, "that's more like household" etc. AIBU to ask does £29k seems that unlikely to be average in your opinion? Do bigger salaries drag it up making it look unrealistic to most?

It's funny to see the facebook thread described in the OP completely replicated in the posts here.

As a country wide average it seems right. It would be interesting to see it county based though. Is it only based on full time wages?

For instance, where I am, almost every job advertised regardless of level falls into the 18-21k bracket. The only people I know that earn more than that are self-employed or work for the nuclear power plant.

How can the median salary be 19k??!!! Clearly it isn’t.

,Jayblue the median household disposable income (after taxes) is just under £29 000. Not gross income.

One person earns 1.9 million £ per year,

99 other people earn 10 thousand one hundred pounds per year -

Average salary roughly 29k

Except that nobody earns anywhere near 20k.

Average salary is meaningless

Yes, mode would have more meaning - the most commonly occuring salary. That would be 10,100 in the random example above, where it's what 99% of the sample earn with 9ne outlier.

@ethelfleda well I just take the stats as the average hadn't really challenged it before so wondered if the averages look a bit skewed to others being an average but the explanations on median make it clearer to me (it's been a few years since I've done the whole median, mode thing!)

Who do you think is average? It's not most people, it's a figure between the top and bottom. Have a look what a fireman, headteacher, doctor earn.
Most people will be on lower, some not working at all, quite a lot on £40-60k
A librarian, teacher, nurse might be average. A plumber is raking it in. Accountant, surveyor, hospital consultant, chief exec of council all on high wage. Footballer or company director beyond your dreams.

Again, the median is used, which would be £10 100 in your example.

Stop it! What was the bloody figure. Which average?

Average without quakification is usuallytaken to be the mean and that is about £29K for all jobs, using latest figures

Their yearly survey showed that the average salary in the UK for men and women combined was £29,009, which includes those in both full-time and part work. For those in full-time work, the average UK salary is £35,423 and £12,083 for those in part-time.

www.findcourses.co.uk/inspiration/articles/average-salary-uk-2018-14105

Income after tax is net. Disposable is after housing cost and bills.

And when I teach this topic, the kids will roll their eyes and ask me why they need to know it

I used to get the same reaction... always owndered why it caused so much fuss. 3 diagrams / sentences and you're done!

@Jayblue No the figure is median annual full time income per person. See the link.

Lots of the confusion is that some are mean average and include part time workers. The median salary per person in the UK for full time workers is £29k.

There will hardly be anyone who has a circle of friends that is representative of the demographic in the UK.
Most people know people who live in similar areas and earn similarly to themselves so the number just seems too high or too low.

"Disposable income is the amount of money that households have available for spending and saving after direct taxes (such as Income Tax and Council Tax) have been accounted for. It includes earnings from employment, private pensions and investments, as well as cash benefits provided by the state. "

From the ONS

I was initially surprised to see how high it was in our area, but then I remembered that there are a lot of very expensive villages where extremely well paid people in the nearest city, and beyond, commute from.

If you were going on purely local wage it would be a lot lower as jobs are mainly retail and tourism related

Mind you, I only read that far, so there's probably a lot more to it! Although getting on for £30 000 seems a lot after all your bills are paid, even on a pretty comfortable gross income.

A lot of confusion here. Obviously the median if you include part time workers is going to be much much lower as it will include people working only 10 hours a week, students doing a job a few evenings a week etc. If you look at the full time median salary it's about £29k for one person if you look at the median in general - including part time it's about £21k.

God, these salaries are horrifically low.

Do bigger salaries drag it up making it look unrealistic to most?

If it were the mean then, yes, that could happen. But average wage figures are based on the median.

If you line everybody up from the lowest paid at one end to the highest paid at the other then then the median is the person in the middle of the line so a few millionaires at one end of the scale won't distort the figures.

Also, don't forget that this is only for people working full time and excludes part time workers.

The actual figure according to the ONS is £569 pw or £29,588 per year. They have a resource here:-

Employee earnings in the UK: 2018

where you can find average figures for all different parts of the country split by local authority (it's about halfway down the page Figure 9)

The highest paid is the City of London (average £1,054 pw) and the lowest is Rother (Bexhill on Sea) with an average of £427 pw.

A bit further down the page they also break it out by occupation so, for example, butchers earn an average of £412 pw (£21,420), educational support assistants earn an average £304 pw (£15,840) and accountants earn an average of £764pw or £39,730.

Just to demonstrate how different people view different things, I remember some time ago that there was a piece in The Guardian that the Labour shadow chancellor had mentioned that £70k a year puts people in the top 5% of earners and he wanted to raise income tax for these people.

In the BTL comments section there were so many people saying things like "Oh I make £70k a year and I'm certainly not rich, in fact we barely scrape by". These people really had no idea that the average salary was £29k and couldn't conceive of how anybody could live on such a low amount as £29k a year.

It's the average because the number of people who earn 100k+ skew the statistics.

Most people where I live earn minimum wage, or ever so slightly more. But it's a very cheap area and you can have a good standard of living on such a low salary.

1. The repetition in this thread is no longer funny

1. God, these salaries are horrifically low. Ha ha!

God, these salaries are horrifically low.

Depends where you live and what your outgoings are, no?

Yes it's right.

For years it was £27K and with inflation it's risen.

I don't consider it a high salary.

The average starting salary for a new graduate is on average £25K.

Teachers start on around £23K, more in London or for some subjects.

Some of my friends' children started on £45K as graduates in the banking sector.

Obviously, unskilled jobs where you need no training or very little, pay less.