• hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      He's referring to the median, which is what gets reported by BLS. But the silent part and why he felt the need to post this is Beijing's median has almost caught up to WV, and I'm not sure how likely it is for the wage growth to stop.

        • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          Wow you're right, per capita income refers to the average. I assumed he meant median because the average is so famously a useless measure for income that I didn't think anyone used it anymore.

            • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              3 years ago

              I often wonder if it got introduced by someone who was half awake in their statistics class and got the misunderstanding that all real world things are normally distributed, and normally distributed things have the mean and median coincide.

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      State averages are also inflated compared to individual towns. The GDP per capita in WV is undoubtedly inflates by Pittsburgh/DC commuters in the Wheeling and Martin's Ferry area as well as the disgusting chemical valley near Charleston. "Per Capita income" in a random WV town is almost certainly quite a bit lower than Shanghai (purchasing power parity), and that doesn't even count the multitude of scams that you have to participate in to live in America which inflate our GDP.