Posted by theonlinecitizen on December 8, 2011
~ by Leong Sze Hian ~
I refer to the article “Increase real incomes for better lives key challenge for govt: PM Lee” (Dec 6, Channel NewsAsia).
Incomes grew 3%?
It states that “real median incomes grew by three per cent between June 2010 and June 2011, after adjusting for inflation”.
Looking at the Singapore Workforce 2011 report, I believe the above statistic refers to the real median income growth of full-time employed residents, including Employer’s CPF contribution.
However, as estimated in my article “Income growth: Only 0.1%?” (Nov 30, theonlinecitizen), the real median income of all employed residents (full-time and part-time), excluding Employer’s CPF contribution, may have grown by only about 0.1% for the year.
0.3% last 2 years?
Also, I estimate the real median income of this category in the previous year, 2010, may only have grown by 0.5 per cent (3.3 per cent nominal growth less inflation of about 2.8 per cent), does it mean that annual real median income growth for this category was only about 0.3 per cent per annum (2011 – 0.1 plus 2010 0.5 divided by 2), from 2009 to 2011?
If this was the case, then it may have been even worse than the 1.1 per cent real median income growth per annum, over the last 10 years, from 2001 to 2011.
Well done! Singaporeans?
So, is the PM’s statement that Singapore has done well this year, due to the strong growth of 2010 a fair reflection of the reality of the labour situation?
If this is indeed what Singaporeans got for having “done well”, in spite of the priority and focus on growing real incomes, how much worse can Singaporeans expect in the future?
Shifting data definitions?
If I am not mistaken, I understand that in the past, the income data normally referred to the income of all resident workers (full-time and part-time), excluding Employer’s CPF contribution. It would seem now that there may be a tendency to refer to the income of full-time workers, including Employer’s CPF contribution.
And of course, when the definition of a part-time worker was changed from the previous 30 work hours or less a week, to 35 hours, the data may have been skewed such that full-time workers may look better.
Had all the previous data definitions been kept, would the real median income have still been positive for the last year? For the last 10 years?
