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How is this possible? "more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income" I can see under the mean or average, but median? How can 80% be b
by jpollock 5y ago
How is this possible?
"more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income"
I can see under the mean or average, but median? How can 80% be below the median when the definition of median is 50% are below this value?
- DuskStar 5y agoMaybe many people are working multiple jobs? So your jobs each pay X, but your income is 2X.
- daxuak 5y agoMaybe that is the median of all states? (I did not read the whole article.)
- fdgsdfogijq 5y agoNot to make this a political issue, but the number of uneducated immigrants in southern california is staggering. Add those to the regular number of workers below the median income, and this number is very easy to arrive at.
- alphabettsy 5y agoHow can you arrive at a median that is not the median?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoOK, but GP has a point. If you're going to add the immigrants to "the number of workers below the median income", but you're not going to add them to the calculation of the median, then you get a garbage number.
- SkyBelow 5y agoIt has a purpose, but the writer needs to be clear which groups are being compared. Saying that 80% of group's A value X fell under the median of group's B value of X can be a useful number for some analysis, even when group B is a subset of group A. The author must be clear which group they are using where, as any confusion between group A and group B should be considered an error in the analysis.
- dottedmag 5y agoMaybe "median income" here does not mean "median income from jobs"?
- pchristensen 5y agoIt means a significant portion income isn't coming from wages (e.g. from benefits, investments, living off of wealth, parents, etc). EDIT: nvm, mikeymouse's comment explains it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mikeyouse 5y agoIt's a weird point phrased poorly, seems they're referencing the chart at the bottom of page 11 here: https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalism-web-sm.pdf https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalis... Which is saying that 80% of new jobs were created at wage levels below the median level. E.g. they are looking at ~1.8 million jobs added from 2008-2018 and comparing it to the median wage in 2018 out of the ~19 million people working in California.
- ohwellhere 5y agoAdditionally, the source material specifies average for the chart, not median, although median is specified in some textual components as well.
- gnicholas 5y agoThe median income is based on multiple income sources, including having more than one job.