I said working age people.
Which is what? That's a very very fluid definition and could, in principle, include the entire population. Somebody age 40 might have to retire due to some disease. And there are people age 100+ still working. And nothing prevents say a 4 years old from working (aside from the law).
If I were to start say a fast food restaurant in Denmark, I wouldn't care what the average working Dane earnt. I'd care what the average Dane who could be working was getting, and so how much money it would take to tempt them into working for me. I wouldn't need people who are already working. And indeed McDonalds workers in Denmark get around 37-40k USD a year if they're working full time (not that many would work 37 hours a week).
If you just look at what the average Dane gets then you'll get a wrong impression. For instance those 37k USD a year are the "minimum wage" (legally there's no such thing as minimum wage and you could fully legally pay your burger flippers 2 $ a month, but you won't find any adult willing to work for less than around 37k USD a month and even finding somebody willing to earn that will be hard). And if they are adults and work less than 37 hours a week you'll still need to pay them around 37k USD a year; and obviously if they work more than 37 hours you'll need to pay more.
Hence why teenagers often are working at burger joints---though they can only be used to some extent since some things by law needs to be carried out by an adult for health and safety reasons..
Probably more money than it would actually take to get people, distorted by union action to freeze out the people who'd happily work for the equivalent of 20k in favour of the ones already with a job.
Not sure what you mean by this. And how does unions come into this?
And nobody except people under 18 and students would be willing to work for 20k USD a year. Working for 20k USD plain and simply would be a huge financial loss compared to what they can get from benefits.
Those retired for a reason; you won't get them to give up their retirement---and if you did why would they then want to work for less than they got when active?
You'll be just as likely to find fairies as finding stay at home moms; they went extinct 40 to 50 years ago.
and so it's far more useful to know how much money there is going around all the people who could have one of my phones, regardless of how that money gets to them. If there's a main earner getting 90k with a partner and child about to leave home, I want to sell them three smartphones from that income, not one.
No such thing as a main earner; women are working too these days.
Also you're now talking about the pricing of items you sell and not what you would need to pay your workers?
The extreme example is slavery. An island with one slave owner and nine slaves bringing in 500k isn't usefully described and compared internationally by an average income of 500k. Those slaves are people too. If nothing else their presence is going to reduce the slave owner's real wage due to his need to provide for them. And if I came along and offered to smuggle them away for a safe job earning 20k, you can probably bet 9 people on that island would leap at the chance.
Pretty sure that the average incomes would be calculated only from the white men. And slaves weren't really human in the eyes of the slavers.'And providing for them is dirt cheap; it won't really take anything out of your profit at all. You have them erect wooden sheds made from wood from local forests. If you're fancy you might have had huts built when the plantation was built and they might even have been made from stone. Food wise the slaves will be growing their own food so that won't cost you anything and if they die then it's no big loss; the "birth factories" are producing plenty of slaves to replace them.
But yes, you could get those slaves to ditch the island if you provided a boat---hence why soldiers were employed to guard them and shoot would be escapists. Slavery was barbaric and cruel, but make no illusion. It was extremely profitable for the individuals controlling the plantations.
In short, a wage of 0 is still a wage as far as averages go. The need for money is no less, only the source.
It makes no sense to include 0 wage earners in the average wage; you include them in the average income sure, but including them in the average wage makes no sense. When calculating the average amount of benefits handed out to people would you then also include the people receiving nothing in benefits?
The one time you'd look only at people working is within a particular sector and job type. It's practically impossible to come up with a meaningful average salary or wage across job types as diverse as farming, fast food and IT. Most fast food workers are doing 20 hours or so, a farmer typically lives his life on the farm, and an IT worker would nominally do 37 hours but the reality might be more like 50-60. The fast food worker's income will be highly variable based on when they work, especially if things like overtime or holiday pay come into play, while the farmer's will be highly variable based on what they're selling. It's part of why no one uses an average income of just people working, it doesn't reflect anything useful. But within a sector and job type, it might be useful for a skilled worker to know what to expect. If I was to move to Denmark it would not be as a generic working age person and I would not care what the average income was - I'd care about the average income for data analysts, statisticians and similar. Which could well be above 50k US. Perhaps Denmark's vaunted stats office means they get paid far more than even Denmark's high average income would suggest, or perhaps there's a glut of statisticians as a result and they actually get a little less than the overall average might suggest. Either way the average just for that job type would be helpful.
For individual sectors it indeed makes sense to get the wage bracket. But I don't see why calculating the average wage doesn't make sense. Your arguments could be used against calculating average income too, since some people sit on their arse raking in money due to investments/inheritance whereas others might earn the same, but work 100 hours a week to earn it.
And unless you employ people under 18 (i.e. children) or students then people will work 37 hours or more (unless they're part time workers, but very few people are that). Though granted, farmers are a bit special; they also are a small minority though.
And if the IT worker works 50 to 60 hours then he'll be getting vast amounts of money for it or it'll be used for flex meaning that he can use it to take time off when he wants to (as long as his surplus hours haven't been spent yet). In reality it'll probably be a mix between getting more money and being allowed to take days off when he wants to.
So why can't that be used to average wage? He is compensated for the hours he works outside of the 37 hours after all---and while the time off can't be included in the average then it shouldn't matter since it just cancels some of the overtime he did.
And everybody gets overtime and holiday pay; don't see how that makes the average bad. People have contracts stating what their monthly salary is, how much they get in holiday pay, and how overtime is compensated. And statisticians almost certainly make way more than 50k USD a year plain and simply due to being university educated. As it is really close to natural science I'd guess it'd be around ~60k to 80k USD a year for entry level (that's the wage bracket for natural scientists).
