Is that true since the economic fallout of 2007? I thought that inflation was rising faster than salaries over the past 6-7 years? (I know mine has - by over 13%).

I suspect the point Holly is trying to make is the difference between median and average incomes.
I think the average salary is about 24K now. (And I seem to remember it being 25 several years back!) Public sector just under 26. Private sector just under 23.
BUT median private sector - just 18.

My son's second job was working for a bank. He was there for three years- as a counter clerk, (which is all 90 odd percent of bank employees are). He started on 14 thousand, and with promotion and commission three years later was on just over 15 thousand. So when people start sounding off about bankers, I tend not to listen.

But certainly, yes I agree DR that even on the official figures, average salaries have lagged inflation for a number of years. Viz the fall in consumer spending. (If you use the Tullett Prebon ones the loss in buying power is even greater).

With GDP artificially inflated for so long, and the country mired in recession (or more properly a depression) for the last five years, that was always going to be the case. If growth can continue (not at these rates, which truly are pretty stellar, but at something over 2 percent) then with a bit of luck and a fair wind things may start picking up.

Yes things are most definitely looking much more positive, it would be pretty hard to put a negative spin on it. A numpty on another forum was predicting no growth for the economy for years to come

To be fair the country wasnt even in recession for 5 years as it turned out with many of the figures upgraded. I see no reason why growth cant continue at this sort of rate with services, manufacturing, tourism all on the up.

OK, I was getting thrown by the fact there were two concepts there: use of average and median; and the fact one was inflation-adjusted (so I assumed the other was not).

I know it's not Friday yet (Pedants Day), but median is an average. So is mean. And mode. (All indices of central tendency). Though I realise many people use average to mean the same as mean.

Median salary will always be lower than mean because of the high degree of positive skewness. If average (mean) salary truly is increasing, it probably indicates that high salaries are increasing at a greater rate than low salaries ... hope that all makes sense.

..........and if it's a debt fuelled recovery.............

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/p...data-show.html

Relative to the Tullett Prebon index is the simple question, but no easy answer, is 'How is Britain going to feed itself?' With a growing population and land being used for housing, surely the amount of home grown produce will shrink and we will be more dependent on imports. Leaving the UK more vulnerable to inflationary pressures on commodities.

http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/issue/uk.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/b...s-8643150.html

Right.

That, over the long haul, the ratio of average income to mean income is increasing, and has been for decades. Even while average income increases.

Which is another way of saying that the poor get poorer, and the "middle class" (really middle income people) also get poorer, even while the GDP increases in real terms.

You will often hear it said that capitalism has thrived while communism has withered. That doesn't mean that the future for ordinary people resembles (the fast disappearing) American middle class. A more accurate model for how the future will look is India.

I think (and I am stretching a bit to remember), that when professional economists talk about average salaries, it is the average between the highest and lowest. When they talk about median, it is weighted for the number in receipt at each level.
In mathematics I believe median is simply the middle number in a series, so I am TBH not sure that economists always use the same measure as each other.
But if anyone knows better, I am happy to be informed.

P.S. I ?think? mean and average are one and the same.

Stretching the grey matter

Did that mean you remembered 'mode' too?

Remember - yes. Remember what it is? No.

Been a few years since I did statistics but if I remember correctly, it is the most common occurrence of a value in a distribution.

E.g. - in the list 2,5,6,2,4,8,2,6; 2 is the mode as it appears three times, compared to two for 6 and one each for 4, 5 and 8.

If yer interested, the mean is 4.37 and the median is 5.

Actually given the sample size is even, the median is 4.5

"If n is even then Median (M) = value of [((n)/2)th item term + ((n)/2 + 1)th item term ]/2"

I would have gone for 4.5 simply because I (no expert) thought it was simply take the numbers in the range, and pick the middle one. Or if there are two middle numbers (i.e. an even number of numbers), then divide those two by 2.

I am very happy to be enlightened further. (Although I suppose we are a bit off-topic).