Gender Gap - Sunshine edition #nlpoli

The House of Assembly passed a bill during the last sitting that would allow the government to publish a list every year of all the people working for government who make more than $100,000 a year.

With all the fuss about the so-called Sunshine List,  maybe it is worth taking some time to have a look at some of the information we already have, thanks to Statistics Canada (CANSIM 111-0008)

 In 2004, 396,050 people in the province reported an income.  6,500 of them made $100,000 or more.  That's 1.6%.*

1,010 of them were women, which works out to zero point two percent of all people with incomes. That leaves about 1.4% (5,490), namely the men,  who earned more than $100,000 in 2004.  Women made up 15.5% of the people who made more than $100,000.

Now flip ahead to 2014.  The number of people with incomes grew by 6% (25,100) but the number of folks making more than $100,000 grew by 443% (28,840).

People making more than $100,000 made up 8% of people with incomes in 2014. Interestingly, 6,320 women made more than $100,000.  Interestingly the male/female ratio of folks in the income category stayed very much the same.  18% of the folks earning more than $100,000 were women.

That jump in the percentage of people making large salaries mirrors what James McLeod found in the public sector. Unfortunately, the Telegram has disappeared McLeod's blog posts in their redesign of the Telly website.

-srbp-

* Re-written for clarity.

The Sunshine List Case hits the court #nlpoli

The public sector unions' attack on freedom of information is finally in front of a judge.  The unions want to  block disclosure of the names of public servants in response to a request from the Telegram's James McLeod for a list of public service positions in which the person holding the job makes more than $100,000 a year.

McLeod is compiling the list because both the former administration and the current one have committed to publishing one but haven't done so yet.  Several other provinces publish similar lists of public employees who make more than $100,000 a year.

The union's says it's okay to disclose the position title and income but McLeod shouldn't  have the name of the person holding the job.  It's a insane argument since there is no practical way to withhold either of the three elements of the request - name, position, salary - such that a person couldn't make up the list after a couple of requests. It's an insane argument from because the unions don't oppose disclosure of the name and position separately from the salary.  Well, at least they haven't objected so far.

But the position taken by the unions doesn't make sense for a bunch of other reasons.