California Counties Ranked by Average Annual Wage Per Job, 2007

[grimstuff]

Originally Posted by nmnita

First of all, this is a 2 year old stat and secondly there are so many things to consider when reading something like this: 1-how many people in the area a are retired, students or as pointed out farm workers who work, only part time? How many work in fast food restaurant or other jobs that require no skills, and how many in pockets where poverty is the norm? The larger the county, the more likely the workers are among the working poor?

I take stats and studies with a grain of salt..

Nita

No need to take the data with a grain of salt... just know what it's telling you. These data report an average of wages across every job in a county. Somewhere on the DOF website there should be a breakdown of criteria they used to count the jobs. The most obvious factor, of course, being part-time versus full-time. There are numerous other factors to consider too, like if it's a higher percentage of full-time jobs in a county that raises average wages, or is it higher wages overall? What you need to take a grain a salt with is how people interpret statistics: i.e. the media, laymen, etc., not the people reporting the data. The media misinterpret studies all the time. They do that because typically, the studies did not report anything near as exciting as they want to make it sound. So they take one thing and spin it and say that that's what the study means, when in reality the study does not make those conclusions.