Comparing apples and pears

A week or so back, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) waded in with some figures to support the Coalition's recently-announced war on scroungers and skivers as George Osborne termed them or, more neutrally, people in receipt of benefits. The headline figures were that benefits, rising in line with inflation had, over five years, gone up by 20% whereas private sector salaries had gone up by an average of only 12% over the same period.

Leaving aside the fact that the average pay rise for public sector workers wasn't mentioned anywhere (a big fat 0% for two years now), what appears to be an outrageous imbalance against the "hard-working middle classes", actually appears a bit differently if you stop to think about it. A 20% increase vs. a 12% increase is only as vastly unfair as the Government would have us believe if it is applied to the same starting figure. However, if you take a very small figure and increase it by 20% it remains a pretty small figure. By comparison, taking a relatively large figure and adding 12% to it leaves the gap between the small figure and the large figure pretty much untouched.

Taking a single person on a salary of £34,000 p.a, that equates to around £28,800 take home or £553 per week. That 12% rise equates to around £59 per week. In comparison, a single jobseeker aged over 25 gets £71 per week, so their 20% increase equates to £12 per week. Now, I'm not going to say that the additional £59 pounds per week for the employed person is undeserved or mere bunce: many people in these times of austerity are living close to the edge financially. But that additional £12 per week makes a massive difference when you starting point is so low to begin with.

I'm not about to get into the "undeserving" vs. the "deserving" unemployed person argument here, but I just thought it should be pointed out that when one is looking to compare apples with something, it is probably best to find some other apples, otherwise your comparison is meaningless. However, I suspect that a level statistical playing field was the last thing on the minds of the DWP when they concocted that comparison. What was that quote about "lies, damned lies and statistics"?