Average salary (£30,000) in the UK?

[DreamChaser23]

www.telegraph.co.uk/money/special-reports/average-uk-salary-profession-check-earn-less-colleagues/

To think that average is misleading and that a lot of people are earning much less than this?

@maddie

Are you in London/Kent? That does seem strange for London if you have been in senior roles

But when we talk colloquially about average what we generally mean is the mean.

Eg: Average salary means to most people that if you took all of the salaries in the country and divided them by the amount of people, the result would give an average.

Meaningless in many ways though as a poster has pointed out as it would be better to look comparatively by location/role, etc as there are too many variables that skewer the results to give an average that we can make the same judgements on.

I can't believe half of people earn less than average

[Grin] would you also believe that only half of people are of less than average intelligence, because sometimes it feels like it's more than that.

I think this is a fairly true picture for UK really .Many people will earn more of course ,especially in London and the Home Counties .However taking in higher costs of living and homes /transport and so on the picture becomes slightly different .Here on South Coast ,housing and rents are expensive (not as much as London )but wages are not that high . Many people feel 30k is a marker if you like, between a "good" wage and those beneath which are v low .However if you live in the North of England ,Wales etc that wage will go quite a long way up there !

They should quote mean, median and modal values on these things.

Modal is not particularly useful for something like salary.

The other thing to note with the figure being quoted is that it is for full-time employees. So it’s not the median figure people take home (because lots of people, especially women, work part time or contract) let alone the median amount people have to live on (because it doesn’t include people who aren’t working).

Sorry to be 'that person', but I teach stats and maths GCSE, and can explain.... mean and median are both averages. Also called measures of central dispersion. Useful in different ways. Yes, this is probably a median, as the median is less skewed by extreme figures (called outliers). The mode is also an average. People who don't study stats assume average is the mean.

Who was it who said: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics"?

Oops is my inner geek showing...

Ah yes dustbooks. And we teach them about misleading stats on the gcse in fact...

The mean salary would, I imagine, be far far higher

Having looked at the raw tables, the mean appears to be about £6k higher.

Wasn't it Michael Gove who wanted all schools to be above average? Or did I imagine that?

Whoever it was, it didn't fill me with confidence...

The Median full time salary is £30,240
so if everybody was working full time, half of people would be earning more than that, half less
BUT
The median wage for part time workers is £10,244
so half of all part time workers earn less than that

The median for ALL WORKERS is around £20,000
The median for all LONDONERS is around £26k

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2019

I can't believe half of people earn less than average!! 😂

I asked DH (who is a statistician) whether median is an average and he said 'I wouldn't get into that debate if I were you' He says it's 'average' which is the vague term; median, mean and modal are specific.

I'd rather see a bar chart.

You can't hide behind a bar chart.

I can't believe half of people earn less than average!!

You'll never guess what? Half of people are less intelligent than average

Mean, median or mode? 'Average' means a number of things.

I think the mode would be useful to know. The most frequently occurring value in a set of values. Would give a good idea of what most people earn. Values would have to be rounded.

Median :

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2019

£585 per week

£30420 per year

I wonder how much that varies between regions?

I can't believe half of people earn less than average

A national scandal

Yes we need the Gove average that everybody is above. Vote Gove for maths.

I don’t think it’s that surprising. In my working life I’ve gone from a low-paid to a fairly well-paid sector and back again. I’m currently earning well below the median. If I’d only worked in one of these sectors I’d have a skewed idea about average earnings I think. Some sectors just don’t pay well in general, but other people are probably earning a lot more than you think, without necessarily having a lifestyle that seems to suggest it.

Wasn't it Michael Gove who wanted all schools to be above average? Or did I imagine that

Q98 Chair: One is: if "good" requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?

Michael Gove: By getting better all the time.

Q99 Chair: So it is possible, is it?

Michael Gove: It is possible to get better all the time.

Q100 Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?

Michael Gove: I cannot remember

So "Good" schools are above average, and he wants all schools to be good or outstanding.

@Butterer