"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?

I fucking hate this 'median average' bullshit. Many people are NOT on nearly £30,000 a year (at 35 hours a week, that's about £16 an hour!)

Some people are on £7.85 an hour, and some people are on £30 an hour. This 'average wage' bullshit pisses me off, as it suggests most people are on around £30,000 a year, which is utter bollocks, and offensive to people on minimum pay, who struggle to get 16-20 hours of work, and who depend on top-ups of tax credits to make ends meet.

It's like the 'average house price' bollocks. Almost a quarter of a million quid apparently. Try telling that to people in south wales and the north east, and so on, whose homes barely scrape past the mid 5 figures.(£50 to 65K.)

All crap.

JinglingHellsBells MN generally is dominated by people who claim to be management grade in international corporations and earning 5 figures.

People on minimum wage are less likely to be posting from work than people with their own office...

This 'average wage' bullshit pisses me off, as it suggests most people are on around £30,000 a year, which is utter bollocks

It doesn't suggest that at all, which is why you need to know what the different types of "average" (mean, median and mode) indicate and how they are calculated. An average is a point in the middle. No more and no less. It doesn't indicate what "most people" are on. It just tells you where the centre point of the range is (sort of; I'm deliberately keeping this simple; don't PM me, maths bods). The mode is the only "average" which gives you any information about what "most people" are on. There are other measures if what you want to know about is the range from largest to smallest, like standard deviation.

The average house price IS the average house price. Why would it not be true because in some areas houses are worth far less?

crazyasafox how is the average wage offensive to those earning less? It’s a statistic, it is what it is. Of course there are going to be people on less than average because it is an average, some people on less, some people on more.

I'd say the average salary is 19k-21k here.

Sounds like crazyasafox might actually be Michael Gove, who famously demanded that all schools and pupils should be above average when he was education secretary.

Some people have incredibly high salaries. Think footballer Alexis Sanchez on close to £25m a year. This brings the averages up. Take the top 5% earners out and it will be much lower.

MrList100 and some people earn incredibly low salaries, take them out and the ‘average’ will be higher. Point being if you start taking groups of people out to make the statistics show what you would prefer them to show then it is no longer a UK average.

Since we appear to need it, here is a brief explanation of mean, mode, median, and their disadvantages:

www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/a3121120.nsf/home/statistical+language+-+measures+of+central+tendency

"The median is less affected by outliers and skewed data than the mean, and is usually the preferred measure of central tendency when the distribution is not symmetrical" (which salary is not).

I thought it was £23k......

I wonder how this will change as you have more people than ever going to university?

In my industry starting salary is about £25k at 21 years old... by 25 I was on £45k and at 28 I was on £120k --- this would be absolutely unheard of in the NE where I'm from but totally possible in London. I think the average in the area I live in would be about £60k. But if I look at where I was born it would be closer to £20k.

These stats just demonstrate how divided salary is across the country.

It sounds ratger low. Does it refer to net income?

Asdf, no. Gross annual income for people employed full time.

I can't see why it wouldn't be correct.

I hope this thread puts to be the thought that mumsnet is full of rich folks. The over whelming majority of people commenting on here earn less than the national average and many on min wage.

Sounds like crazyasafox might actually be Michael Gove, who famously demanded that all schools and pupils should be above average when he was education secretary

I’ve never seen someone overreact quite so spectacularly to statistics.

That and the graph Capara included (copied in here) us has equivalised median numbers.

So they are even more accurate / fair / whatever

ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Equivalised_income

Wasn't it also Michael Gove who said people were sick of "experts"?

It actually scares me how people are adamant that their life experience isn't so, therefore facts must be incorrect.

Wasn't it also Michael Gove who said people were sick of "experts"? Well, he would say that wouldn't he. To make his own ineptitude more acceptable

That's disposable household income not salary though CuriousaboutSamphire so measuring something totally different.

Apparently, according to that graph, some households have almost no disposable income.

Off to Google exactly what disposable income is after - "bills" could include absolutely anything.

Yeah, it was just to show how the distribution with a right long tail can skew the mean

In contravention of MN norms there seem to be a lot of posters on this thread who have grasped basic statistics but can’t actually read.

It’s certainly not the norm where I live. That’s a little bit more than our household income!

But then again, I imagine the 29k figure is the MEDIAN salary, which essentially means that 50% earn less and 50% earn more. So it’s not all that unbelievable.

I was on £20k pa, couldn't get higher. Hated it.

I do think that’s probably about right for an average wage. I earn £33k, have no GCSEs or A Levels, have NVQs in things related to my job so I feel I have done ok. I work with a lot of people who have far more qualifications than I do and they earn the same. We have national pay scales so the £33k I earn in the Home Counties doesn’t go as far as someone earning the same in the NE for instance. I would feel rich if I transferred north .

Most people I know earn similar or less to what I do and I suppose a lot of people associate with people on similar pay by default so that’s what you know.

It does make me laugh as others have said that around 90% of Mumsnet claim to earn six figure salaries. Clearly bullshit!