CSO Detailed Wage report

nesf

Finally some detailed data on wage behaviour for Q1 2008 to Q1 2009 (i.e. before the emergency budget and the pension levy etc!)

http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/earnings/current/earnlabcosts.pdf

Some clarifications on what the numbers mean:

Average Earnings increasing in a private sector area does not mean that people are earning more money when there's a large amount of job losses over the period (i.e. junior people tend to be fired first and junior people tend to be paid less in most areas where junior means fewer years worked with the company). If you start firing the workers who earn least in a company and do nothing else the average hourly earnings in the company will rise so long as there are people in the company who earned more than those who were fired!

Private Sector Earnings losses (a few examples, check the report for all areas)

Industry: +0.6%
Construction: -1.3%
Wholesale/Retail: -1.7%
Finance/Banking: -13.3%

Earning Losses as per Company Size (employees):

Small (0-50): -4.9%
Medium (50-250): +0.3%
Large (250+): +1.3%

Hourly earnings were not the main driver in the above but the amount of hours worked! Hourly earnings increased by 3.4% in the Medium category but as you can see this did not actually effect people's take home pay much. In the Small category hourly earnings only decreased by 0.7% but the cut to people's salaries was much higher. This essentially is a good example of what I was saying weeks ago about how people were misinterpreting what "average hourly earnings" mean and how just hourly earnings numbers don't give us a clear picture on how people's take home salaries are being effected. Another example is from Manual workers where hourly earnings increased by 3.1% but weekly pay decreased by 1.9% because hours were cut.

These losses will have increased as 2009 wore on and the recession worsened considerably in the first half of 2009

Riskymove

yes some very interesting reading

notably:

1. the major hit on irregular earnings (overtime, bonuses etc) in certain sectors

2. the ongoing extrordinary impact of job lossess in construction, industry and motor trade sectors and the limited impact in other sectors

3. the clear need to examine serious issues in health and education

PeakOutput

i find the apparent lack of interest in this very interesting considering how many people (on both sides) like to profess how they know this and that for a fact and will argue about it until the cows come home but when cold hard evidence is placed on the table which goes against what they were saying there is a deathly silence

says alot about the people imo

Kristopherus

They're probably plastered after spending their bonus for the night thats in it

nesf

PeakOutput wrote: »

i find the apparent lack of interest in this very interesting considering how many people (on both sides) like to profess how they know this and that for a fact and will argue about it until the cows come home but when cold hard evidence is placed on the table which goes against what they were saying there is a deathly silence

says alot about the people imo

Probably because broad aggregate data like this isn't really that intelligible to people. What does a 0.6% earnings increase combined with 9.8% reduction in workforce in a category as broad as "Industry" mean? You're talking about everything from workers who get no change in take home pay, workers losing their jobs and workers taking 10+% decreases in take home pay all lumped in together. Never mind that most people think average means median etc.