The 77% Is A Lie, And They Know It

Some data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently came to my attention. For the year 2011 there were 7.4 million men over the age of 16 engaged in the work force and 6.5 million women. Do you see where I'm going with this? Allow me. What this means is that if EVERYONE currently in the workforce (everyone who wants to work) were paid exactly the same amount of money regardless of what work they did, education, construction, healthcare, international espionage, entertainment, blogging.... whatever....EVERYONE is paid exactly the same..... you could honestly say that women in the year 2011 earned only 88% of what their male counterparts were paid. It's absolutely true, but also absolutely meaningless. INDIVIDUAL women would have earned EXACTLY the same amount as the INDIVIDUAL men, but taken as a group it is also possible and accurate to say that they earned less. Now why on earth would anyone want to deceive you???

The moral of the story is that when you hear that some group or other earns less than some other group you need to ask a question: What is being compared here, in what way, and does the way the way the data is being presented support some broader narrative that the presenter may be trying to promote?

But that’s just what an average guy thinks