Rise in pay at a 14-year low
Wednesday 26th August 2009, 3:00PM BST.
Duncan Gibaut, from the States Statistics Unit.
WORKERS in Jersey now earn an average of £32,240 a year – a rise of three per cent in 12 months but the smallest increase in 14 years.
A snapshot taken in June reveals that workers were paid an average £620 a week – £20 more than in the same month last year. This is a £1,040 increase over the course of a year.
Meanwhile, finance workers enjoyed bonuses totalling just under £75 million in the year to June –about the same level as in the year to June 2008.
The average salary of the 13,000 staff in the Island’s biggest industry was £860 compared to £820 last June, a rise of 3.5 per cent, which was down from the 4.6 per cent increase of 12 months earlier.
The figures, presented by Duncan Gibaut from the States Statistics Unit, show that States employees remain the second highest earners but their earnings only increased by £10 a week to £810 – a rise of one per cent.
• See Wednesday’s JEP for full story.
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Who the hell is earning £620 a week – I wish, there must be some on outrageous money for this to balance out the average. Most people I know are on closer to £400 per week.
If you are earning average or above the average wage and are griping about poor pay increase or lack of bonus WAKE UP, you inhabit rarefied air!
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I wish I was earning that, there must be a lot of fat cats around to work that out as an average.
Management!!!!!!! pen pushers, not the one’s doing the graft.
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The only way to get a truly reflective figure of what people earn is NOT to dump us all in the same melting pot.
Let’s see what the average pay is across the board for all MANUAL workers as a separate sector of the work-force, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the States to reveal this figure because it would be too contentious and reveal that there are people who are living on the breadline in the affluent Jersey !!!
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Read the BBC website stats guru on the subject of average salaries – basically it is the mean average is meaningless as it is distorted by a small minority who earn huge sums.
The mean tells us very little about ordinary people – its much closer to a statement about our economy like GDP/GNP per head.
The really meaningful average is the median – the point on the earnings scale where the middle earner (e.g the 50th highest/lowest person in a list of 100) sits.
This figure will be much lower than the mean average.
The problem is that clearly well over half the population ( and many in finance) will be thoroughly depressed that they are failing to earn the “average”. In addition questions like “can you live in Jersey on £32k” are pointless – clearly plenty of people do. The real question should be what kind of life can you have on £20k which is probably far closer to the reality for the majority of folks out there.
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I find it funny that states employees are the second highest earners yet they were complaining so badly earlier in the year it was unfair that their pay increase had frozen.
I wish I had the same amount of money that they were on considering the amount of residents most likely earning half of what they got. Whoever is earning between £600 -£800 must be laughing.
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The average figure for staff working in retail is according to the stats £11 an hour (based on a 40 hour week).
The real figure is more like £8 an hour.
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…that also goes for the States workers who average £810….but poor them because their wages “only” increased by a tenner a week!!
That is an average of £3200 a month wages paid by muggins the taxpayer!
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I would prefer having the median average (the middle person) not the mean average (add them up and divide by number of people) as this would give a better representation as the very high finance/law and doctor jobs are likely to have less impact.
I’ve found the report (http://www.gov.je/NR/rdonlyres/76CBC697-FB66-4B46-AA17-55D2DFBD4D3A/0/AEIRelease2009.pdf) but has anyone got the full data? so the mode can be calculated?
Even better could Duncan Gibaut do the calculations for us (I’m sure it would just be another function on his spreadsheet)
Yours in hope of transparency…….
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These are averages and not to be taken seriously. The only people earning £800 plus are the senior managers etc.
The one that worrys me is £75 million bonus.
The banks caused this resession and now they reward all staff with the big bonus.
I bet it includes money from the UK bail out which is UK tax payers money.
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Thats why everything is so expensive in jersey,the market can stand it.
too many people earn a good wage and don,t care how much they pay for goods or services,the rest of us are merely struggling to get by.
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I write this as a 11K. That’s eleven thousand. Just over £200 a week to do whatever I want with!
Don’t confuse me with a 1(1)(K) they’re in a differnt league.
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What a load of rubbish. Both me and my Patner work full time and gross 43,000 pounds. Is 32,240 pounds 1the pay that these statisticians get for producing bias information?!
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Facts are stubborn things but statistics are more pliable.Fact has been usurped in telling the majority on far lower wages that statistically they are disadvantaged and unfairly paid, according to an apparently smug States Statistics Unit and afforded front page JEP news annually.This is a misleading socially divisive yearly reported mistruth and serves only to depreciate the worth of those, whose annual wage falls well below this reported “average” of over £32,000 per annum.
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9 Mark
That is absolute rubbish……the vast majority of island businesses didn’t need bailing out because they were the most profitable. Woolworths Jersey was the most profitable branch in the Uk but went under over here because of the problems with their UK branches. Same goes with the banks and plenty of them carry the same name but are actually separate entities because we are “offshore”, hence any profits made with offshore businesses are usually shared with offshore employees.
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How much is an average monthly mortgage payment for an average 3 bedrrom house (£400k !!)?
I would guess between £2500-3000 per month over 20 years. By my rough calculations this means a family income must exceed £70k a year to afford this and live too.
How realistic is this for the majority of islanders?
And before anyone responds with corrections or specific figures, my numbers are guestimates.
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I have a bank account with one of the larger banks that operate in the island.
My banking adviser told me that if account holders have more than £5000 in net cash then they are viewed as a premier customer but few customers qualified.
If average wages are £32k then it is almost unbelievable that only a small proportion of islanders qualify as premier customers.
Maybe we could have some statistics on net debt in the island?
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Lies,Damn Lies & Statistics
do none of the highly paid imports to work in the states have any statistics training?
Seems like anyone locally educated to 16 could have produced a better analysis of the spread of earnings.
A new question for the maths syllabus.
Q:”If a states employee calculates tbe average salary in Jersey to be £32,240 then why do more than 50% of workers in Jersey earn a lot less than this?”
A: Multichoice
a, they are incompetant and do not have a rudimentary understanding of statistics even though they earn 20% more than the median salary.
b, their bosses are even more incompetant and that despite earning the highest salaries in the public sector cannot tell black from white
c. there is a hallucenogenic fungi that thrives on high CO2 levels only present in States buildings that leads to publishing ridiculously over optimistic data.
d, all of the above
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The average pay where I live in the U.K. is about £24,000, yet houses are cheaper as is the cost of living.
They say building materials in Jersey cost twice as much as they do here in the U.K. and that essentials like food etc., are more expensive. This, I am told, is due to the transportation costs.
What about transporation costs to the Shetland Islands and Outer Hebrides? Is it more expensive to get food and other merchandise there?
What happened to the idea of getting cheaper supermarkets in the Island, like Aldi, Lidl etc. ? Surely that would help bring down costs in Jersey….the cost of shipping acorss from france would also be cheaper…wouldn’t it?
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Wages rising, inflation dropping and people earning on average much more than anywhere else in Europe.
And yet you would think from the comments this was bad news.
As for the whingers going on abou retail and manual work: manual and unskilled labourers always get paid far less than skilled workers. Its a universal rule. If you want more money, get trained and get some skills. Otherwise be happy that you can leave work at 5pm or earlier without any worries. Just don’t take the easy option and then complain about it.
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(18) ZBD Because the other 2 supermarkets and chamber of commerce scream they would lose bussiness every time another supermarket or lidl etc is mentioned.
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Mad foetus # 19. says, “Its a universal rule. If you want more money, get trained and get some skills. Otherwise be happy that you can leave work at 5pm or earlier without any worries. Just don’t take the easy option and then complain about it.”
Life isn’t that simple, there are many people who have excellent skills and qualifications who can’t get the jobs they aspire to. Doubtless you have heard of nepotism and cronyism – it used to be rife in Jersey.
Many of the lower paid workers, who you say are whinging, perform essential jobs that help you to continue in whatever high flying role you perfom.
I imagine many of these people are highly industrious and innovative, who probaly achieve more in a few hours than some high flyers do in a day. I don’t believe you can justify the disparity in pay between manual workers and so called white collar workers. There are many manual jobs where technical abilities are required – I know I couldn’t do some of their jobs and I have held down some very responsible posts and been highly paid too.
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Zbd – Unfortunately the English Channel is the most expensive stretch of water in the world and the freight costs ironically reflect the wages and conditions that operating staff at each end of the Channel enjoy.
Whilst Mad Foetus is fairly blunt he does have a valid point. In my experience people who harper on about nepotism and cronyism are people who need an excuse for their own shortcomings. I have many friends who have made a great living in Jersey and they wouldn’t know a States member if one hit them crossing the street. They are thankful for their quality of life, have a few niggles, but work hard to achieve a balance – and I’m not just referring to material possessions Adrian before you start on me
If someone is highly industrious and innovative they would probably be running their own small business rather than doing a manual job. Skilled manual workers earn higher grade pay and therefore as mad foetus said – pay is often commiserate with experience and qualifications.
Certain jobs have certain pay structures and whilst some such as nurses are grossly underpaid for their skill level, pay tends to follow the basic law of economics – supply and demand.
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just to put the record straight about us manual workers as people seem to assume that we are all on £600+ a week.now i work for the parish of st.helier on the refuse section i am a grade 2 and my weekly salary is £415.06,which does not add up to £32000 a year. i think these states members must be pressing the wrong button on there calculators or lieing to the public about us. the only people that would recieve £32000+ a year are civil servants ie. management. So please do not think we are all highly paid as they lead u to believe……
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#joe (23)
you got it right.
trying to mislead the public as usual.
£415 is not a lot to live on in jersey.
most people i know pay over £200 in rent.
plus everything else is much more expence than other places.
Keep fighting for you rights to earn a decent living wage,same as those who do get more.
your job is more important than their,s as without people like you we would all soon be overcome with deceases and plagues.
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Cathy # 22. Nepotism and cronyism doesn’t have to involve memeber of the States.
Fortunately I had a fairly successful career and was well paid. However I saw plenty of capable people passed over, when it came to appointments to certain departments. This was often based on misplaced prejudices rather than a candidate’s skills and abilities.
Contrary to your view, I believe there are plenty of industrious and innovative people involved in manaul work. Often their personal circumstances, or finances prevent them from setting up their own business.
If the English Channel is such an expensive stretch of water to cross, why not look for an alternative, like the 14 mile stretch of water between Jersey and France?
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Duncan Gibaut and his States Statistics Unit should be ashamed of their repetitive annual grossly misleading report of a so called average wage, which grabbed front page headlines yet again and is certainly mischievous in that it implies that anyone under that so called average is underpaid. Mr. Gibaut and his colleagues in the Statistics Unit should be held to account for their actions in perpetuating the myth that the average wage for all is over £32,000.
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ZBD and Cathy have talked about freight costs in some of the above comments.Can I just tell you something I noticed the other day?I saw on TV an advert for a store in England who charge £5 for delivery (and this can be a long distance bear in mind!)I also know that delivery is free on many internet sites.Can anyone explain why it is that when I bought my son a garden furniture set at M & S in Jersey when I was over there the delivery charge (added by Condor I believe) was THIRTY POUNDS????This was for a distance of a couple of miles taking perhaps 15 minutes.I had no car otherwise I would have battled to get it there myself but I was told this is the standard charge.
Whilst many in Jersey are earning good salaries the majority are not earning enough to live to the standard they would like.I have both examples within my family.The hard fact is that if you cannot live as you would like in Jersey then leave unless you really cannot see yourself anywhere else and then you just have to accept that it is an expensive place to live and just get on with it.The grass is not always greener on the other side but sometimes it is!!
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Yes again some interesting comment about the inexplicable “Cost of shipping” goods to the Island?
The States have over the last few decades had the opportunity to secure this Island’s lines of communication by both sea and air at the UK end.
Both Southampton Airport, and the Albert Johnson Dock at Portsmouth freeholds were sold for a comparative song in the late 1980′s, and look how both are thriving now!
Not to mention other South Coast opportunities!
By purchasing those sorts of freehold, and also the equivalent on the French Coast, The States would have secured our physical lines of communication as an Island which would have then been in our public ownership and therefore not targets for unscrupulous operators wishing to hold the Island to ransom by securing such access points and then imposing excessive freight and passenger charges.
Why does it cost less to fly UK to Nice in the South of France than from Southampton to Jersey?
Why is bread far more expensive here than in the UK?
Why do we seem to pay the 17.5% UK VAT and then our own GST on top on more than a few items?
Why does it take so long for furniture items to travel 100 miles by sea?
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Nick # 28. Your comments over securring Jersey’s lines of communication by both sea and air were really illuminating. The strategic planners in the States seem to have failed yet again….as they say, “Failing to plan is palnning to fail.”
Notwithstanding all this, I think Jersey is still a wonderful place and in response to Julie’s comments about ‘the grass being greener’ I totally agree. I have lived in Jersey for most of my life and although I have moved away, I often feel the call to come back. The U.K. isn’t all that great…it certainly isn’t Great Britain any longer.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again! The moaning and groaning on these sites, public opinion, demonstration, voting against certain decisions made by the “boys club” will never rock the boat on this Island as too many people are too financially comfortable to care what goes on, the proof is out there, average £40,000 + p.a. which planet are they on??? But as said, It will blow over like everything else does, the public will forget about this statistic within a week and moan about something else that nothing will be done about. 4 weeks and 3 days and I’m out of here!
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“Duncan Gibaut and his States Statistics Unit should be ashamed of their repetitive annual grossly misleading report of a so called average wage, which grabbed front page headlines yet again and is certainly mischievous in that it implies that anyone under that so called average is underpaid. Mr. Gibaut and his colleagues in the Statistics Unit should be held to account for their actions in perpetuating the myth that the average wage for all is over £32,000.”
Has the world gone mad? If the average is £32,000, it does not imply that anyone under that average is underpaid. It implies that at least half of the population gets paid less than that. It is not a value judgement but a statistical one.
It would have been helpful to have been provided with both the median and the mean wage figures as the median is a much more accurate assessment of what Joe Schmo actually earns. But it should be fairly obvious that at least half the population is always going to earn less than the average wage.
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To all those who are having a gripe at Duncan Gibaut and the statistics team, i have to wonder…have any of you worked in a statistics team?
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And to number 17….who in their right minds would be foolish enough to rely on median data as an accurate means of finding stats? Have you ever studied accountancy, or, for that matter, economics?
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Mathematically there are lots of different types of ‘average’.
Of course, it’s a great idea to take the most useLESS of the types of average and form a story around it.
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Judith, dear me we do have chip on our shoulder. Your view that only the workers are grafting and that management are all penpushers and wasters is about as valuable as other comments which infder that everyone is earning at the average wage!
What sort of world are you living in!
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Rather than adding up the total of everyone’s salary and dividing by the number of people earning said salaries to get an “average”,I for one would be interested to see what the high-end, low-end and average wages are for each industry type in Jersey and compare them to the UK equivalents.
I would also like to see the averages shown in a simple graph depicting how many people fall into each wage tier to get a better picture of what the actual “average” wage really is. Maybe the earners ages may be of relevance too because as we know many school leavers/part-timers etc will have a lower income than those who work full time and have been in employemnt for some time.
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Percentages are just a way of ballancing the books when it is required.
17% of the worlds population speak Chinese, so that would mean that with Jerseys population being 90k, some 15 thousand islanders can speak it. Yet how many people in the island do you know capable of holding a converstaion in Chinese other than asking for a Number 27 and Number 35 with a pancake roll !
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#28 Nick: You seem to be suggesting that the States buy a foreign airport and/or port and operate it while offering local suppliers preferential rates.
The answers to all your questions is: lower demand so less economies of scale and lack of competition. Expensive public projects certainly aren’t the answer.
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The poverty line is defined as 60% of the median income. It was formally defined as 50% of the mean.
As we are only given the mean (and not the better average of the median) it means that anyone in Jersey on less than £16,120 a year (£310 pw) is living below the poverty line.
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I find it hard to believe that Mr/Mrs Average walking on the streets of St helier is earning £620 a week!
Where does this figure come from? A sample group used in a survey or the entire working population of the island? Do we have access to this data?
In my mind i bet the vast majority of people are earning £30k or less and the “average” is being skewed by the few earning a lot more than £32,240!!
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BS Deluxe you are right again.
We need to know specific percentiles when living somewhere like Jersey with such a vast wealth divide.
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Why average pay means next to nothing, by way of a made up example:-
1 person earns £99,000,000
99 people earn £1,000,000
Total income £100,000,000
Average= £1,000,000!!
However if you get rid of the highest earner and their income you get a more realistic figure of £10,101, a big difference from the average wage of £1M in this little example.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the top 20% over here got 80% of the money and 80% got 20% of the money in wages. This is why looking at averages is a waste of time.
As BS Deluxe has already pointed out you need to know the full facts. However if the full facts were known would the majority feel even worse off and wonder why they were being paid peanuts in comparision to a select few earning millions per year?
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By the way, your maths is wrong:
“1 person earns £99,000,000
99 people earn £1,000,000
Total income £100,000,000″
No, total income is £198,000,000.
The details do matter, even when the principle is correct.
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I find Deputy Southern’s claim that finance workers got 3.5% increases in the past year very annoying. I got zero and so did around 11 other people I know and from different firms. When will these politicions actually acknowledge what is really going on out there for a change?
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No, mad foetus.
99 people earn a million. Not each.
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Anyone reading every thursday`s employment column in the evening post can see what people re getting for example
Gardner mw/3 (manual worker grade 3) £415.06 and thats Gross before tax insurance etc
Admin assistant c/s 5 (civil service grade 5) £439. per week
Medical Secretary again c/s5 (civil service grade 5 £439.per week. So can Duncan give us some true figures – and you will see most manual workers do not earn as much as they say.
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