I used the same data that I used for the map yesterday but plotted the ratio against median total earnings. Partly this was to see if there is a pattern to discern in North Dakota counties such as higher median earnings leading to an increasing or decreasing parity ratio. To assist in this examination, I added a linear regression line and a confidence interval and this is what I found.
Continue reading Male-Female Earnings Ratio in ND, A follow up
Today is Equal Pay Day. If you go back to January 1, 2017 and move forward from there, a woman would need to work until today, April 10, 2018, to make what a man made by December 31, 2017. That is one form of comparison. I generated the following map from Census Bureau data for counties in North Dakota for median wage by sex.
The March 2018 release came out and did not provide a ton of good news. The new data represents events of January 2018 and therefore pushes us through the entire holiday season. The March 2018 data was down 4.79% from the March 2017. The first quarter of 2018 declined 6.02% from the first quarter of 2017. The city likes to report a rolling 12 month total. For those that do not know, this means they look at the total for the last twelve months and as a new month is added they drop the oldest month. The city suggests this is more accurate, though I am not clear what the term accuracy implies here. The rolling 12-month total generally crosses multiple fiscal years so it is not really reflective of a specific budget year which would be something like calendar year accumulations. The other issue is this measure is down 19 of the last 20 months.
The simple fact is that pensions are still in the news all the time. You might think they settled down after the Detroit pension debacle but do a quick Google News search on pensions and you will see that teacher pensions in multiple states are in the news, Park District employees in Chicago won a court case regarding pensions, and I tweeted a few days ago an article pointing out the problems with a multi-company pension that seemed to be teetering on the brink. This is not a rant against workers pensions though. Pensions are an important part of the negotiated compensation package between workers and employers.
