Off topic posts moved from the Moving From Romania thread
 

Err...its above average I would have thought.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Ah, about average depending on the job.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Err Ah, the average wage is a little under £25,000 (figures from the Office of National Statistics). So there is nothing average about a wage of £40,000.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I don't want to get in a debate, but when I said average wage I was thinking of an educated professional that has quite a few years of experience under his/her belt. Not average as in average in the whole of UK which includes people on min. wage.

That said 25000 pounds is not bad of a salary either.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

:goodpost:

That's what average salary is - the whole of the UK! The OP said a pharmaceutical company and that could just be sales, which is not an educated professional IMO

Until the UK decide to leave the EU :)

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I had assumed when she said 40000 that she/he was some sort of educated professional of sorts. But yes what you said is considered "average"
If they decide to leave the EU

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

What you find if you decide to visit the UK is that alot of people have never wanted to be in Europe an it's a massive issue in regards to elections. Many people want to leave the EU and many other parties that are promoting this are getting more votes.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I've gotten a small snapshot of this through BE... My impression is its fairly divided. Personally I don't think the UK will leave the EU.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Also "average" is generally quite a bit higher than "median" since it is averaging the upper middle class, the millionaires, and billionaires to get the average and those incomes combined more than offsets workers on minimum wage. So it's likely that over 2/3rds of the workers make less than "average" income.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Actually the current median UK wage is a little higher than the UK average wage, but there is not much in it. Median wage is £26,884 (according to the Guardian).

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I suspect that is median household income since it is impossible to have median income greater than average income since even if everyone below 50% made median income, that would mean that everyone above 50% would also have to make median income to cause median income to equal average income. Therefore it is mathematically impossible for median income to be larger than average income since that would require someone in the upper 50% to have less income than someone in the lower 50% or someone in the lower 50% to have more income that someone in the upper 50% which can't happen since that would cause someone to move from the lower 50% to the upper 50% and someone in the upper 50% would move to the lower 50%.:huh::confused:

The only thing I can find to back that up is Wikipedia which indicates £21,300 for the 50% and £33,300 for the 75% for 2012-2013 estimates and the mean or average at £29,900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

Therefore average means very little since a few rich people in a very poor country could have a high average income for the country but the average person may live on £1 a day. Median is better for comparisons but also isn't great since distribution of income may tell more which is the GINI index but is difficult and complex to understand and also doesn't give a complete picture. Therefore tables like the one in the link give a more accurate picture.

Sometimes the Guardian can be confusing like the following article. I don't understand why medium household income rises as people have children and where they actually get those statistics from since governments usually don't collect that type of statistics except possibly during a census year. That may have nothing to do with children but more to do with age when incomes tend to rise. For example, 90% of the single people are probably young and probably most of the couples with two children may be over 30 or 35 and as people retire, their incomes usually drop and children are no longer part of the household. Therefore single young people and single retirees tend to have the lowest incomes and a high percentage of married couples without children as part of a household are retirees.

UK incomes: how does your salary compare? | Money | theguardian.com

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Median income is the point at which 50% of the population earns less and 50% of the population earns more. It is perfectly possible for the median income to be more than the average income, or less.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

And, with the greatest respect, your reply is gibberish.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Mathematically impossible. OK I'll try to put it in a simpler way. Give me a 10 numbers with 5 greater or equal to the other 5 where the median will be more than the average and you won't be able to do that because it can't mathematically occur since the sum of the top 5 numbers will always be at least as great or greater than the sum of the bottom 5 numbers.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

As can be demonstrated very easily:

Take 10 Lilliputians earning, $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8, $9 and $10.

Their average wage is $5.5. Their median wage is also $5.5.

But the best paid Lilliputian gets a wage rise to $20. The median wage is still $5.5, but the average wage is now $6.5. So the average pay is higher than the median pay.

Then outrage at the excessive pay of the richest Lilliputian causes a revolution. Pay scales are reformed and the pay of the ten is now: $2, $3, $4, $5, $5, $6, $7, $7, $7, $7. The average pay is now $5.3. The median pay is still $5.5. So now the average pay is lower than the median pay.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

:lol:

When do I get my Nobel prize for proving a 'mathematical impossibility' is possible?

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

My apologies, you are absolutely correct that it can occur.:o

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I like a person who doesn't mind apologising :thumbup:

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Median income would be higher than "average" income (by which I ssume you mean the mean), if the data are negatively skewed, simple as that.

However, as income data are almost always positively skewed, "average" (mean) income is invariably higher than the median.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

No, I meant median. Mean is the same thing as average.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I know right :rofl:

I didn't come for math class guys ;)

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

You started it Gozi, referring to 'average'.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

I was answering OPs question related to salary :unsure:

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

That's what I said.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Except that the median wage is currently higher than the mean wage, so it isn't 'invariable' is it?

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Not according to the link that Michael provided:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom
- which is the only evidence I can find in the thread (maybe you provided some evidence and I'm missing it). Mean is higher than median for all age groups in the Wikipedia source that Michael provided.

As per my earlier point, income data are invariable positively skewed. I teach statistics and use this example all the time to demonstrate the effect of skewness on estimates of central tendency (mean and median).

Just one text excerpt says "That same year [2011], the after-tax earnings of the median household was around £26,000 per annum while average net household income (after tax) stood at £38,547"

I don't see anything in there that shows median income higher than mean income for any age category or group, or for the population as a whole. Look at the table titled "Percentile points for income of individuals before tax" - the mean is higher than the median for every year.

Anyway, to get back to the OP's question, £40k is a well above average salary (guesstimate is that it is around the 80th percentile).

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

The Wikipedia link provides figures for 2010-11.

According to the 2014 figures average (i.e. mean) wages are £474 p.w - i.e. £24,648 p.a.

The Guardian reported in December last year that HMRC figures showed that median wage was £517, which is higher than the mean.

But, I can't find a link to the HMRC figures.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Heathrow_0808, you might want to be careful taking advice from a 16-year-old child, who is still at school, lives with his parents in Canada and has never lived in the UK.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

No, she might want to be careful taking advice from YOU , an obviously arrogant poster who believes that just because i'm 15 (16 in 5 months) i am not smart / dont have an opinion. :nod:
It doesnt't take a rocket scientist to know that 40K GBP (about 75k CAD) is more than enough to save and live on in the UK.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

:lol:

If I were the OP, I'd just start a new thread. In terms of their questions, there's about 10% relevant information on this one, and the rest is people arguing about means, medians, averages, ages, and arrogance .

:lol:

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

The Guardian is using data that only includes "full time" workers. Usually international organizations (World Bank, OECD, etc.) don't use individual incomes but household incomes for comparisons since it is much easier to skew the results for individual incomes and if individual incomes are used, it doesn't account for things such as job participation rates. France has a high individual income for full time workers but a low job participation rate so their "median" household income is not high. However in the US, the "median" household income is accepted to be about $52,000 but someone always gets that to be about $70,000 which is a figure that some use to make a point. The figure probably gets to about $70,000 by eliminating households that don't have reported incomes and/or only have government social benefits income (retirees and the poor). Another document had US wages at about $10.50 per hour which would seem impossible unless both the husband and wife in many households worked more than 40 hours per week and/or have a large source of unearned income to get to the $52,000 per year median household income.

When calculating incomes, unless you know what is being included or excluded, it is hard to determine what it is referring to. If unearned income is excluded, the figures will be different than if it is included. No one statistic accurately portrays everything. Even in the table from Wikipedia, the "median" was lower and the "mean" was higher than your provided figures and without full disclosure, neither may be represent what someone is trying to determine.

It probably depends on what you are looking for depends on which statistic you want to use and in the case of the original OP, the Guardian figures might be better to use.

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Hmmm, now where is that Ignore Button again, ah, here it is.......

Re: Moving from Romania to UK
 

Somewhere on this forum in the last year or so (I think) I posted information from the Guardian that suggested about half the UK were earning around £22k or less.

Re: Off topic posts moved from the Moving From Romania thread
 

The following are the median household incomes and average wages for 2011/2012. It seems weird that average disposable wages generally exceeds median disposable household incomes but that is what averages can do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

Re: Off topic posts moved from the Moving From Romania thread
 

For what its worth, the hardest class for me in University was Statistics, which is what you are talking about.

I've been jealous at the incomes in the UK because they are higher than in the US, for the most part, but there maybe a correction coming because the pound is now slipping against the dollar in the last few weeks.

Cheers