Oh no! Not the 8th year of declining pay for graduates?

Graduates’ starting pay expected to increase this year? 

We refer to the article “Slight pay rise seen for fresh university graduates this year” (My Paper, Aug 28).

It states that “The management consulting firm’s latest Fresh Graduate Pay Survey has indicated that the average monthly starting salary for a bachelor’s degree graduate (without honours) will be $2,741, up from last year’s $2,683″.

Pay survey 15% less than Graduate Employment Survey’s pay ?

- According to the article “Close to 90% of fresh graduates employed in 2013: Joint university survey” (Straits Times, Feb 28) -

“The average gross monthly salary among fresh graduates in full-time jobs was $3,229, while the median gross monthly salary was $3,050″.

So, does it mean that the subject survey’s average graduates’ pay of $2,741 this year, is about 15% ($2,741 divided by $3,229) lower than the average pay last year in the Graduate Employment Survey?

Another year of negative real pay increase?

As the expected increase in pay is only $58 ($2,741 minus $2,683) this year, compared to last year – does it mean that the expected increase is only about 2.2%?

Since inflation is expected to be 2 to 3% this year – does it mean that we may see yet another year of negative real increase in the starting pay of graduates?

Real pay decreased 3.4%?

In this regard, since the median gross monthly salary in last year’s Graduate Employment survey was also $3,050 (same as this year’s) – what it means is that in real terms after adjusting for inflation – the salary has declined.

In fact, the average gross monthly salary has dropped from last year’s $3,260 to this year’s $3,229. As inflation was 2.4% in 2013 – in real terms – the average salary decreased by about 3.4%.

2nd consecutive year of decline?

Comparing to the previous year (2011) – the median gross monthly salary of $3,050 in 2012 to 2011′s $3,000 – after adjusting for inflation of about 4.6 per cent in 2012, the real salary increase was about minus 2.9 per cent in 2012.

So, we have a second consecutive year of negative real salary increase.

7 years of negative real growth in salary? 

Well, you may be thinking if its negative for 2 consecutive years – what about the previous years?

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be able to find the median salary in 2006.

Mean pay was $2,700 in 2006?

In this connection, according to Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) ClassAct Issue 51, June 2007, “NTU graduates from the Class of 2006″ had “a mean gross monthly salary of $2,700″.

In this connection, according to www.salary.sg, “Channelnewsasia.com (said) this is higher than both NUS and SMU“. Hence, if we have the data for NUS and SMU for 2006 – does it mean that the real pay decline since 2006 may even be worse than what we compute below?

Nominal salary grew 1.8% p.a.?

So, does this means that starting salaries for NTU (assuming the $3,050 median salary for all 3 universities in 2013) grew by about 1.8 per cent per annum, from 2006 to 2013?

Real salary minus 1.7 p.a.%?

Since inflation was about 3,5 per cent per annum for the same 7-year period from 2006 (CPI 91.3) to 2013 (CPI 115.8), does it mean that the real increase in salaries per annum was about minus 1.7 per cent?

Median worse than mean?

Since our above calculations are based on the mean salaries because we cannot find the data on the median salaries in 2006, is the real growth in the median salaries even worse than that for the mean salaries computed above?

Now have median and mean salaries, but only mean in the past?

Why is it that media reports now report both the median and mean salaries, but only the mean salaries in the past?

Was it because the Graduate Employment Survey reports only reported the mean in some of the previous years?