Monday, February 21, 2011

How our govt skewed the statistic

This is just one example how our govt skewed statistic - change the reference parameters.

Mr Leong Sze Hian has pointed out that our govt has recently change the data definition and thereby resulting in better numbers. A paragraph taken from his article :

In this connection, last year’s resident full-time and part-time workers’ real income increased by 1.3 and 10 per cent respectively. But these figures may look better because of the change in definition in 2009 to classify part-time workers as those working less than 35 hours a week, instead of 30 hours previously. This may make the part-timers’ income higher because those previously working more than 30 hours may boost up their overall earnings, and full-timers income may also look higher because those working less than 35 hours would no longer be in their category. In other words, the presumably bottom rung of full-timers were moved to become presumably the top rung of part-timers

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