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Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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Pay Gaps #17 – How to Spot an Incorrect Median Gender Pay Gap

August 11, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

I have a spotted an incorrect median gender pay gap published by a well known name in a certain industry.  They shall remain nameless for now since I am trying to get them to accept their error and publish a new gender pay gap report on their website.  I know they have made an error because their published data violates the laws of mathematics as I will explain in this blog.  All it takes to spot such an error is a simple calculation you can do in your head and an understanding what the median measures.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #17 – How to Spot an Incorrect Median Gender Pay Gap

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Checking for errors, Data Errors, data quality, Gender Pay Fingerprint, Gender Pay Gap, Median, Statistical Thinking

Pay Gaps #16 – Eliminate your gender pay gap by playing Blackjack!

August 2, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

Imagine where you work, the median women earns 33% less than the median man.  Although your workplace is gender balanced with 50:50 men:women, the pay gap exists because 1 in 4 of managers and 3 in 4 of the lowest paid admin staff are women.  How long will it take for the pay gap to disappear assuming that all future recruitment at all levels have 50:50 candidate pools with men and women equally likely to be appointed to the role?

Up to 25 years i.e. a generation

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #16 – Eliminate your gender pay gap by playing Blackjack!

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Creative Pay Gapping, gaming, Gender Pay Gap, Presenting data

Pay Gap Trends #2 – My analysis of 7 sectors for Practical Law magazine

June 3, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

In April, I was asked to analyse the trends in UK gender pay gaps over the 3 years of mandatory reporting from 2017 to 2019 for Practical Law.  They were interested in 7 customised sectors and the links to these can be found in this post.

[Read more…] about Pay Gap Trends #2 – My analysis of 7 sectors for Practical Law magazine

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: 2019, Gender Pay Gap, imputation, pay gap trends, Practical Law, Presenting data, Sector analysis, trend analysis

Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps

February 19, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

Recently, a lot of people have been making incorrect claims about what a gender pay gap tells you.  I have been pointing out these errors but in doing so, I am conscious I come across as a pedant or a negative voice.  The problem is that the official gender pay gap measure (the difference between the median man and the median woman) is just a single number and that single number does not capture the full nuance of what is going on.  I have decided it is time to introduce the Gender Pay Fingerprint to the world as an alternative and going forward, I will be encouraging people to use this instead.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Box Plot, Gender Parity, Gender Pay Fingerprint, Gender Pay Gap, Income Quarters, Income Quartiles, industry sector, Pay Gap Analysis

Pay Gap Case Study #3- Will the BBC’s gender pay gap narrow after losing to Samira Ahmed?

February 13, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

The BBC presenter Samira Ahmed has won her claim for equal pay at the employment tribunal.  She successfully claimed that Jeremy Vine was an appropriate comparator for her pay.  She is not the only female presenter to make a claim with over 50 more claims under consideration at present.  Assuming that these are all successful, will these have any effect on the BBC’s gender pay gap for 2019 of 7p in the pound?

[Read more…] about Pay Gap Case Study #3- Will the BBC’s gender pay gap narrow after losing to Samira Ahmed?

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Audit, BBC, Equal Pay, Gender Pay Gap, Median, Unequal Pay

Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?

February 11, 2020 By Nigel Marriott

On 5th February 2020, Baroness Prosser laid a bill in the House of Lords which calls for the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting in addition to a number of other initiatives.  Last year I explained why ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot follow the same process as gender pay gap reporting so now is the time to explore how ethnicity pay gap reporting could be carried out.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: classification, Closing Gaps, Data journalism, data quality, Ethnicity Pay Gap, Gender Pay Gap, SIC, Statistician

Pay Gaps #12 – Unequal Pay & Gender Pay Gaps are not the same thing!

November 8, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

The 14th November 2019 is being incorrectly marked as Equal Pay Day in the UK by the Fawcett Society.  By having a campaign name that conflates equal pay issues with the gender pay gap, the Fawcett Society runs the risk of misleading men and women in the UK in their understanding of what these two concepts mean.

If you care about statistics being used correctly then please lobby the Fawcett Society to rename this as Gender Pay Gap day instead.

If you care about issues to do with Equal Pay, then please support the #MeTooPay campaign instead.  This is a new campaign, led by Dame Moya Greene, who are explicit about the distinction and are saying, quite rightly, that with the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act taking place next year, cases of unequal pay should not be happening in this day and age.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #12 – Unequal Pay & Gender Pay Gaps are not the same thing!

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Equal Pay, Equal Pay Day, Fawcett Society, Gender Pay Gap, Median, Unequal Pay

Pay Gaps #11 – A median sized problem with 10 solutions from the RSS

August 7, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and I have published two articles to help employers better calculate and interpret their gender pay gaps.  The first article lists 10 recommendations to improve the quality of gender pay gap reporting, the second is an article in Significance magazine which explores in more detail, two of the recommendations concerning medians and quartiles.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #11 – A median sized problem with 10 solutions from the RSS

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: data quality, Gender Pay Gap, Median, Quartiles, Royal Statistical Society, Significance

Pay Gaps #10 – Should the UK introduce Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting?

July 18, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

After two years of mandatory gender pay gap reporting, there is increasing pressure to bring in pay gap reporting for other protected characteristics.  At the moment, ethnicity is receiving the greatest attention and a number of politicians are calling for the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.

In this post, I will explain why I am opposed to an ethnicity pay gap reporting process which simply replicates the gender pay gap reporting process.  In a future post, I will explore what an ethnicity pay gap reporting process should look like if parliament decides it wants to make this law.

[Read more…] about Pay Gaps #10 – Should the UK introduce Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting?

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: data quality, Ethnicity Pay Gap, Gender Pay Gap, Statistician

Ethnicity #1 – Is all white alright?

July 18, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

You have just started work for a new employer and with you joining, the company now has 25 employees.  All are white including you.  Would you raise your eyebrows at that?

[Read more…] about Ethnicity #1 – Is all white alright?

Filed Under: Diversity Tagged With: Bayes rule, Binomial Distribution, Discrimination, Ethnicity, Probability, Workplace diversity

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