Calculating the average on a "bathtub curve" is disingenuous. Most minimum-wage workers are either young or old; most 36-year-olds are NOT making minimum wage. When the standard deviation from your average is nearly as wide as the data range, there's your clue that computing the average (median, mode) is wrong.
It's like calculating the average depth of the Grand Canyon: if you average out the entire park, you'll get something like "3 feet".
There was a famous statistician about 20 years ago that drowned in a river in northern california that had an average depth of 3 inches.
That is an excellent point, thank you for pointing it out!
89% are not teenagers and 37% are 40 or older. How do you define young and old?
most 36-year-olds are NOT making minimum wage. When the standard deviation from your average is nearly as wide as the data range, there's your clue that computing the average (median, mode) is wrong.
So what is your point? You seem to have missed the most telling statistic that only 40% of all US adults are employed in jobs for 30 or more hours a week. With labor participation rates at their lowest in 38 years and almost 100 million Americans of working age not in the workforce, we have a major problem.
From the article: Since February of 2008, the size of the U.S. population has grown by 16.8 million people. But during that same time frame, the number of full-time jobs in this country has actually decreased. Your response:
When the standard deviation from your average is nearly as wide as the data range, there's your clue that computing the average (median, mode) is wrong.
It's like calculating the average depth of the Grand Canyon: if you average out the entire park, you'll get something like "3 feet".
Again, what is your point? Are you trying to diminish what is happening to American workers? The author sums it up this way, I’ll be honest with you – the future for workers in America looks really bleak. The competition for any jobs that can’t be shipped overseas or replaced by technology is going to become even more heated. This means that the middle class is going to get even smaller, the number of Americans dependent on the government is going to continue to explode, and the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is going to become even greater.