Budget 2021

A lot of stuff, key points here ;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59063816

I dont like the look of this one ;

Consultation on an online sales tax

Id also love to know where this comes from ;

Wages have grown in real terms by 3.4% since February 2020

Mine have not increased by anything like that, nor has anyone Ive spoken to (Family, Friends).

Probably "Track & Trace" companies employees raising the average…

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Probably "Track & Trace" companies employees raising the average…

I’ve no idea what they factor into the calculation but if it relies on the average wage then how furlough has been taken into account and if the lower paid bore the brunt of redundancies in the pandemic then that could drive the average up.

[Carth]

They should remove the top and bottom 10% of earners, then recalculate an average . . or do they do that already?

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by jfman

I’ve no idea what they factor into the calculation but if it relies on the average wage then how furlough has been taken into account and if the lower paid bore the brunt of redundancies in the pandemic then that could drive the average up.

The figures are comparing from Feb 2020, so excluding furlough. "In real terms" means above(or in addition to) inflation.

Seems like they come up with the figures using a survey based upon PAYE data. If a disproportionate number of surviving jobs were the higher paid ones, then that might skew the figures.

An "online sales tax" should include all methods of remote buying eg phone, grocery deliveries. There's nothing exactly new about remote buying, so why all the fuss?

Originally Posted by Carth

They should remove the top and bottom 10% of earners, then recalculate an average . . or do they do that already?

When they say "average", they mean "median", which is more representative.

https://surveymethods.com/when-is-it...ian-over-mean/

Median can play a major role in things like income level research as well, because a few millionaires may make it look like the socio-economic status of your sample is higher than it really is.

Whenever a graph falls on a normal distribution, using the mean is a good choice. But if your data has extreme scores (such as the difference between a millionaire and someone making 30,000 a year), you will need to look at median, because you’ll find a much more representative number for your sample.

If you look at the ONS website, it shows this…

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentand...dearnings/2021

Median weekly pay for full-time employees was £611 in April 2021, up 4.3% on a year earlier; this growth is the highest since 2008.
Across all jobs, median weekly earnings in April 2021 increased by 5.3% from a year earlier on a nominal basis; when adjusted for inflation, they increased 3.6% in real terms over the year; between April 2019 and April 2020 they remained unchanged in nominal terms and decreased by 0.9% in real terms.

[jfman]

So minimum wage employees becoming self employed Deliveroo drivers would skew the median up.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

When they say "average", they mean "median", which is more representative.

https://surveymethods.com/when-is-it...ian-over-mean/

If you look at the ONS website, it shows this…

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentand...dearnings/2021

Median can also be a distortion if there is an extremely wide range between top and bottom.

In terms of using Excel, the TRIMMEAN method allows you to trim at the top and bottom based on a rationale, and then takes the MEAN of what's left.

I'm surprised at the surveymethods.com advice.

Depends how large your sample size is - for instance, the ONS stats normally come from a sample size of around 180,000, but for the ast year it was 140,000 (due to COVID).

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Depends how large your sample size is - for instance, the ONS stats normally come from a sample size of around 180,000, but for the ast year it was 140,000 (due to COVID).

At both sample sizes you've given, TRIMMEAN would not be inapplicable. The real kicker in TRIMMEAN is the range of values at each extreme; the Excel formula allows you to snip at each extreme end.