How do storytellers use data?

A friend forwarded an article about minimum wages in Hong Kong published by CNN (link). The article is filled with statistics and data. It's interesting to observe how the reporter chose to present them.

(excerpt from this amazing infographic by SCMP)

The following list is in order of appearance in the article:

• minimum wage went up by 32 cents (in the title of the article)
• one of the world's priciest cities
• the least affordable housing market on the planet
• parking spaces that go for nearly a milion dollars each
• new minimum wage is 40 HK dollars (US$5.1) per hour
• previous minimum wage was 37.5 HK dollars (US$4.78) per hour
• minimum wage was first established in 2011
• minimum wage was frozen to 2021 levels since the pandemic
• tied with Los Angeles as the fourth place on the Worldwide Cost of Living Index in 2022, with only New York, Singapore and Tel Aviv in front of it
• New York's minimum wage is US$15 per hour, Tel Aviv's about US$8.27-8.45, depending on total hours worked, Singapore "offers different minimum wages depending on sector"
• the median hourly wage last year was 77.4 HK dollars ($9.86)
• severe wealth gap, with the richest households making 47 times more than the poorest
• the income of the poorest decile (bottom 10%) fell by more than 20% compared to their incomes before the Covid outbreak
• the proportion of people living on minimum wage is actually lower than a decade ago: only 2.6% of employees earned less than $40 an hour in 2021, compared to 6.4% in 2011 [for some reason, this number is stated in HK dollars and not translated into US dollars, as are all the other values in the article. the $40 an hour is the new minimum wage equivalent to $5.1 US]
• the gap between median and minimum wage has increased
• food costs have risen more than 7% from December 2019 to December 2022
• energy costs have also increased by more than 11% during the same period

***

What should we make of the 32-cent increase in the headline? It is designed to shock American audiences and the context for interpreting that number is not provided until later in the piece, much later.

The first piece of hidden data is the absolute value of the minimum wage, which was US$4.78 prior to the raise. This means that the raise was about 7%. Scroll to the bottom of the list, we find that food inflation was 7% aggregated over a 3-year period, so roughly 2.5% per year. Also for context, for most American corporate workers, it's been a long time since we got salary increases in the 7% range.

Another important piece of data is that the median wage was less than US$10 per hour. Knowing this statistic did not stop the reporter from comparing Hong Kong's minimum wage of $5 to New York's of $15. Half the population in Hong Kong earn less than two-thirds of New York's minimum wage. According to this site, the median hourly wage in New York City is $28. So those numbers aren't directly compared.

Further, below the fold, the reporter mentioned that only 2.6% of people earn less than the minimum wage in Hong Kong. The proportion earning below minimum wage has been cut by 60% in the last decade. In New York City, according to that same site, about 20% earn less than the minimum wage, which is almost 10 times higher than in Hong Kong.

Singapore is perhaps the most comparable place to Hong Kong. Singapore is described by most writers as not have a (universal) minimum wage, which is euphenism for saying the minimum wage is $0. I wonder what is the story behind that.

Of course, it's natural for labor activists to push for bigger increases in minimum wages. I just find it fascinating how the statistics were processed, selected and sequenced for publication. A different selection and sequencing would have yielded a different story line.

Comments

[Michael Droy]

The Hong Kong attempted color revolution was interesting. It was launched far too early to have any chance of achieving anything in Hong Kong. The blackshirts were so violent so that the initial moderate support from those unhappy about economic conditions (and seeing mainland China catch up so much) faded very quickly. SMCP was of course right behind it.
Why did the "revolution" get triggered so early? Look to Taiwan where the KMT in 2019 were leading in the election polls but because of widely publicised "fears" about China in HK the vote swung back to the DPP in the Jan 2020 election. DPP are more more aggressively anti-mainland Por-US than KMT making the Jan 2024 elections interesting.