Comparing apples to apples

The following was submitted to the Sun for publication earlier this week but I haven’t heard if it will be published so I’m posting it here anyway.

The Bermuda Sun recently reported a number of rather startling statistics on income disparities between the races.  Quoting data from the Statistic Department’s 2009 Employment Brief they suggest that “White Bermudian 'clerks', for example, make $8,000 a year more than black Bermudian clerks.”  Undoubtedly this statistic is shocking and dismaying and only more startling than the statistic itself is the realization that it isn’t painting a fair picture.

To be clear there is no argument on the part of this writer that racism does not play a factor and that there is likely a disparity in pay between the races, however that does not justify misinterpretations of statistics that skew the perception of the problem in favor of one side or another.

Let us start our examination of the above statistic by taking a look at the earnings range of clerks.  According to table 20 on page 16 of the 2008 Employment Brief Tabulations data there were 5763 individuals considered under the ‘Clerks’ major occupation group.  Of these individuals, 78 were listed as earning an annual salary of under $6000 and 3 were listed as earning between $235,000 and $349,000 with the remainder falling in between.  Just to get the true scope of the distribution, let’s look at it in chart form.

Note the rather wide distribution in salaries.  The question you may be asking yourself is how one clerk can make so little while another can make so much.  The answer lies in the definition of ‘clerk’ which represents a major occupational group of unskilled clerks all the way to highly skilled clerks who perform advanced research in complex topics.   Indeed, the 2000 Census even classifies ‘Government Executive Officials’ and ‘Cashiers ‘ in the clerical role. Thus comparing one random clerk to another is not a simple apples to apples comparison. 

Now, another question to ask yourself, how likely is a cashier to have a doctorate degree?  If you agree that it is quite unlikely then you may also agree that education level plays a factor in what kind of job you end up with and the subsequent range of pay you can expect to receive.  Indeed we can look to the 2000 Census to confirm that the higher your education level, the more you can expect to earn on a median basis.

We can now see clear evidence that education level matters greatly in terms of earnings potential so now let us examine data available from the 2000 census on academic attainment by race.  To make the data easier to interpret let us simply compare percentage distributions from the data compiled for Bermudian population aged 16 years and over by highest academic qualification by race, which is available via table 2 on page 50 of the 2000 Census.

We can note via this chart that a much higher percentage of white Bermudians in the year 2000 had degrees than black Bermudians, who had the highest percentage of no qualifications.  While the classifications unfortunately do not exactly match the detailed breakdowns above, this was the best picture available by Bermudian status.  If considering non Bermudian status we can see the full breakdown via data from figure 4.3 on page 129 of the 2000 Census.

The sad reality that we face is that white Bermudians are more likely to hold a higher level of education and thus are more likely to earn more.  This subsequently explains why they would outpace black Bermudians in the ‘clerks’ occupational category along with many other wide reaching major occupational group.  While indeed racism is a factor that should be considered and examined we unfortunately do not have the statistical depth to get a true picture of the problem.  Indeed, to truly compare apples to apples we need to break down jobs by Bermudian status, race, academic qualification, field of qualification, pay, experience level and even institutions attended.  Even then we are forced to make approximations to make comparisons as no two people are exactly alike.  Regardless it is important that we take the time to fully understand the statistics we’re dealing with so we can fully appreciate the problem and hopefully determine its true cause.

The Ex factor revisited

Do we use statistics to understand how we should shape government policy in coming years?  For example do we consider the impact of every added expatriate job when determining housing needs such that we adjust planning policy or subsidize new developments ahead of time to compensate?

Let’s do some approximating to find out what kind of housing expectations we have based upon job growth.

Unfortunately the latest available appropriate statistics are from the 2000 Census which is rather dated.  It will likely serve as a good enough approximation but it is truly unfortunate that these kind of stats are not updated more regularly.  We’ll use “Rented Dwellings by Monthly Rent, Number of Bedrooms and Bermudian Status of Household Reference Person” as a benchmark for housing expectations.

So here we have a depiction of households by # of bedrooms in the year 2000 rented by non-Bermudians.

Let us now try a bit of approximation.  We’ll take the number of households in each category and divide them into the total number of expatriate jobs to determine how the number of jobs approximately affects housing occupancy.

Ok, so what this chart tells us is that if we use the 2000 census as a benchmark, for every 100 new expatriate jobs added to the island, just under 5% would live in studio apartments, 22% in one bedroom apartments, 19% in two bedroom, 10% in three bedroom, 2% in four bedrooms and less than 1% would live in 5 or more bedroom accommodations.  Also accounted for are the 40% of total jobs where the individual is not the household reference person.

So now that we have the approximate impact of the addition of every expatriate job, let’s take a look at expatriate job growth.

Let’s look at that again, only this time simply by the annual growth in jobs.

Ok, so now let’s overlay job growth and our earlier approximations of the household requirements per 100 jobs added on top of existing household numbers for the year 2000.

Ah, so now we’re looking at what may be the most telling chart of what this blog has been trying to explain for years.  Let’s look at just the annual growth to get an even clearer picture.

Ok, so this chart should be very telling as it gives us a picture of rentals demand based upon expatriate job growth over the years since the 2000 Census.  What has happened to our housing market is that we never adequately projected and prepared for the increased demand in one and two bedroom apartments.  Indeed, since the year 2000 we can approximate demand for nearly 650 one bedroom and just over 550 two bedroom apartments.  If supply doesn’t adequately match this demand two things occur, one is that prices for these in demand households rise, two is that people begin to “house-share” such that demand filters from one/two bedroom into larger households.

The critical issue is that as demand has shifted due to lack of adequate supply it has driven up prices across the board.  This essentially has impacted Bermudian households for a two income Bermudian family cannot compete with what three expatriates can pay if they share the same three bedroom house.  Thus, Bermudians lose.

So, while we’re busy building new ‘affordable homes for Bermudians’ we’re really not solving the fundamental problem. 

Not so black and white

This years employment brief has been released and will likely be a focus as I’m able to find time over the coming days to review it.

The Royal Gazette has already jumped on the earnings gap between black and white workers by opening their coverage with “The average salary of white workers is 40 percent higher than blacks, according to a recent employment survey.”  This reflects poor reporting because the implications of the differences in racial demographics of Bermudians vs. Non-Bermudians are not made clear.  Thus Bermudians could potentially be falsely led to believe that the racial earnings gap is a lot larger than it is when the sheer percentage of white non-Bermudians who are brought to the island massively tip the scale.  The Royal Gazette can do better than this.

It is also a failure on the part of the employment brief (just as we highlighted with past Cure Reporting) to not identify racial earnings based upon Bermudians vs. Non-Bermudians.  The reason being that the majority of Bermudians are black while the majority of non-Bermudians are white and yet the level and type of jobs held by Bermudians vs. non-Bermudians, especially by race, are quite different.  This is also the reason why Bermudians median income lies at $51,976 while non-Bermudian median income lies at $65,316.  Let us also note that this is median and not average which means the person in the middle of the group not the average salary taking the total and dividing by all members.  In the case of average salary the numbers would likely be even more skewed.

To get a better idea lets look at some hard numbers by taking a look at data available from the Annual Review of the Workforce Survey Report 2006 (used for comparison, it’s the latest one I have on hand and no others are online yet) and take a look at Gross Annual Income by Race and Bermudian Status, 2006.

Note that the sheer number of Black Bermudians skew the chart and outpace anything else in the lower 3 categories of pay ranges from less than $23,999 to $60,000 - $95,000.

Let’s again look at this in % comparison

Note how white non-Bermudians dominate the upper pay ranges while Black Bermudians dominate the lower pay ranges.

To make things clearer let us first compare Bermudians and then compare non-Bermudians alone.

So here we have Gross Annual Income By Race for Bermudians only.  This is where we need to focus our attention on discrepancies of where the percentage distribution does not match general demographics.  We cannot expect Bermudians to measure up equally against the best and brightest of the rest of the world and thus the fairest comparison is to compare Bermudians to Bermudians.

Now let’s look at non-Bermudians

Note how much white non-Bermudians skew the upper portions of the pay scale.  How can we honestly simply compare black and white when not taking Bermudian/non-Bermudian into consideration?

For those wondering why the earnings gap exists between the races we covered that back in November 2007.  As we concluded the earnings gap between the races statistically (there is still the potential for racism to be a factor as to why people holding the same qualifications make different amounts of money, though those kind of stats are not available to my knowledge) comes down to profession which subsequently comes down to education. 

Brief indicators

This year’s employment brief is an important one not for what it can tell us about the impact of the global downturn but instead what it can tell us about Bermuda’s economy before the downturn hit.  It was argued beyond the end of last year whether Bermuda would be impacted by the downturn, thus we can assume that any significant declines in job numbers are not likely to be tied to the downturn itself.  Instead, declines would point to larger perhaps forgotten issues that we would have created ourselves.  Indeed, we have yet to see the true impact of government policy decisions like term limits and whether the government is correct when they suggest it has had little impact or instead if people and the jobs they perform have quietly been moving off island.

Where is the 2009 Employment Brief?

It’s already August 26th so where is the 2009 Employment Brief?  Can someone explain how for at least 5 years in a row the annual Employment Briefs were released in June.  Last year they came late and were released in August, though still mentioned June in the actual report.  This year August is days away from being over and not a peep.  When should we expect the 2009 Employment Brief?

BermudaTourism.com

Last night we covered the very disappointing tourism arrival numbers, today we get wind of the promising results of the Bermuda Tourism website, which is encouraging.

Statistics released for the website suggest an 81% year on year increase in visitors for the second quarter which hopefully is an indication of an improving recognition of Bermuda abroad.   The suggested page view total of 2.7 million for 301,000 visits is a good sign as this indicates an average of about 9 pages viewed per visitor which is quite a good rating for any website.  Of note however is that it is preferable if we could be provided statistics of how many of those visits and page views were from Bermudian IP addresses and how many were from foreign sources.  This should not be a difficult nor unreasonable statistic to attain and if the Bermuda Tourism website has truly been a success this should be a statistic they happily provide.

Quoted in the article is the “bounce rate” of the website which had a decline of 48.5%, though the actual rate was unfortunately not provided and we can hope it will be.  For the uninitiated the bounce rate refers to how many people only visited a single page before leaving the site.  The bounce rate of a site is usually used to measure the old marketing principle that it takes less than 3 seconds for someone to decide whether they’re interested in learning more and thus is a good indication of whether you’re adequately capturing your audience.

The new look of the site is actually quite appealing though it is hard not to frown at the load time for the flash animation.  While it is quite good in comparison to most sites this writer has always believed that the core of a website is getting people the information they want as fast as possible with the least possible amount of effort.  Flash is usually gimmicky and turns off those who come looking for answers, not gimmicks.  Overall though the load time is quick enough that the flash load time isn’t very noticeable which is a positive if we’re going to have flash.

The site succeeds in having a clean and elegant look that doesn’t overload the user with too much information or leave the page looking empty.  The photos chosen are quite good and very fitting for both the site and Bermuda.  The layout of the site is well done and the navigation is good, though it is a bit confusing when you click on headers like ‘Travel’ under the meetings section and aren’t taken anywhere.  Despite there being a dropdown the color change of the heading suggests it is meant to take you somewhere and yet it confusingly refreshes to the same page.  The spacing of some informational items seem a bit off, though nothing really worth fretting over.  Overall the information provided on the site seems quite good and comprehensive which is definitely what we’re aiming for.  Finally, bonus points are necessary for having contact details on every page, this is something that should be stressed for every website as no one should have to struggle to figure out how to get in touch with someone quickly.

While we may be very disappointed with the present tourism numbers we can hold out some hope that the tide may be turning and that the Tourism Department may well have charted a course in the right direction for the future.  Their focus on our core markets and recent advertising schemes are much more promising than some of those that have been undertaken in the past and we can hold out hope that things will continue to improve.  Hopefully the new website is just one small step in a large scope of positive things to come, for certainly Bermuda needs it.

Misled with tourism statistics?

Two great quotes and a great cartoon found by The Big Picture:

“The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern…American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.”
– Julius Barnes, head of Hoover’s National Business Survey Conference, March 16, 1930

“While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst — and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.”
– Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930

There are many market cheerleaders out there spinning recent poor economic data as less bad and the markets have happily followed along.  Hey, the economy is no longer crashing at a startling pace, that must be a sign of a recovery right?  We’ll certainly see…

In a breaking news piece on The Royal Gazette Premier Brown is quoted as suggesting that less bad tourism numbers are a good sign.

“Already, in just the first six months of 2009, we have seen a slowdown to the slowdown,” Dr. Brown said. “Visitor arrivals have improved pretty convincingly between the first quarter and the second quarter of this year. Visitor numbers were down 27.84 percent in the first quarter, but after the second quarter the 2009 year-to-date figure has improved to an 11.28 percent decrease when compared to the year prior.

“That is clearly a trend in the right direction. This trend is expected to improve even further in the third quarter.”

Well sure, it is really nice to say the 2009 Q2 figure has improved over the Q1 numbers while conveniently not mentioning that last year we also just happened to witness a near 12% drop in Q2 arrivals.  A question that arises is how spending performed as the hugely discounted promotions hotels have been offering to attract tourists likely boosted numbers while cut spending.  To be fair we should also be examining year over year performance for the last few years as opposed to just last year.

Let us put things into context.  Let’s take the very latest Caribbean Tourism Statistics (found via google as they’re not officially posted on their site yet) and normalize the gain and loss percentages of each country to 2003 levels (2003 = 100) so we can get an idea of how well we’ve performed.  For added interest we’ll even throw in Antigua & Barbuda statistics as they’ve already reported their full Q2 numbers.

Notice how Bermuda has vastly underperformed the average Caribbean destination?  Oh, but don’t worry about that, we’ve improved upon the Q1 decline, that must be a sign of a recovery, right?