The Annual Fare rise

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

Is the average wage rise giving the right picture? How much of that is due to few people getting a very large rise. The median might give a better picture.

[didcotdean]

ONS^» (Office for National Statistics - website) says:

AWE is calculated from returns to the Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey (MWSS), a survey of 9,000 businesses covering 13.8 million employees. The MWSS captures information about each company’s total wage bill and the number of people paid in the reference period. Having been weighted to the Great Britain level, the total wage bill is then divided by the number of employees to give average weekly earnings.
AWE also reflects changes to the industrial composition of the workforce. For instance, all other things being equal, an increase in the relative number of employees in highly paid industries will cause average earnings to rise. This compositional effect, known as the employment contribution, was not captured by AWE’s predecessor, the AEI. We publish separate estimates of the wage and employment contributions to AWE growth in supplementary tables called the AWE decomposition.

The main weakness as I see it is that it doesn't include consideration of the self-employed. Also the sample needs to be representative.

It is the stat used in the uprating of basic/new state pensions.

[stuving]

It's all very well saying "I shouldn't pay more for the service I get as a passenger". The trouble is that, unless something changes the efficiency of the railways, that means "people who don't use railways the should pay for me". That needs justification.

The other half of the equation is efficiency. The ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) have been doing some sums on this, though the result (in Rail productivity 2010-2015 is a bit puzzling. They have produced figures for the cost (p) per passenger km, with general inflation (i.e. for GDP, not retail prices) taken out. Their figures cover 2011/12 to 2014/15, and I've copied them below. They include infrastructure costs, which is fair enough for maintenance and routine renewals. It seems wrong for enhancements which will be paid for, if at all, over the life of the new infrastructure. So I've put that as an additional add-on at the bottom.

Category	2010-11	2014-15	increase
Train Operating Costs	6.77	8.64	28%
ROSCO» (Rolling Stock Owning Company - about) charges	2.50	1.87	-25%
Infrastructure opex and maintenance	3.52	3.01	-15%
Infrastructure renewals	3.98	4.25	7%
Total	16.77	17.77	6%
Infrastructure enhancements	2.38	4.20	76%
Total	19.16	21.97	15%

The in-between years, which I left out, suggest these changes are all trends rather than oddities of the two years shown. It does look strange, doesn't it, that train leasing has got so much cheaper, while operating costs have gone up so much. If you want to know why, you could look in the ORR's bigger collection of "GB^▸ (Great Britain) rail industry financial information". Loads of numbers there! But, having looked at a few of them, I can't see where this effect comes from.

[broadgage]

Is the average wage rise giving the right picture? How much of that is due to few people getting a very large rise. The median might give a better picture.

In my view, the figure is misleading, not JUST for the reason given of distortion due to small numbers getting a large rise, but ALSO it is based not on basic salary, but on take home pay, which in many cases includes overtime or similar payment.
It would be very perilous to be reliant on overtime payment in order to be able to afford fares to work. Any cessation of overtime could result in the job becoming non viable. If someone resigned under such conditions they would struggle to obtain social security payment on the grounds that they had voluntarily left employment.

[didcotdean]

There is a series on basic pay only. The latest rise figure happens to be the same, ie 2.5%.