Thoughts on Changes in SE3 Findings

[E720]

I was going through the SE3 surveys and found something interesting. In the 2016 Pay Survey being a sole practitioner was found to be correlated with +42k in pay from the base pay for men and -7k from the base pay for women in the model.

In the 2018 SE3 Survey a model was created based off the data that correlated being a sole practitioner with -60k in pay from the base in the model (not broken down by gender).



Even knowing that the 2 different years had 2 different models and the base pay is different for each model (IE you cant directly compare +42k with -60k), and recognizing that one year it was broken down by gender and the next year it was not, doesn't this seem like an extreme relative difference? I didn't find any commentary on the subject in the reports. I was wondering if any of the good folks on EB had any thoughts on the matter. The reports can be found at the link below:

https://www.se3committee.com/publications

 

[Andy Lin]

To be honest, I would take the info regarding "sole practitioner" with a grain of salt for the following reasons:

1. With only 79 responses in 2016 and 82 responses in 2018, data is very limited. Any additional data will likely shift the median pay significantly in one direction or the other.
   
    
   
2. The definition of "pay" for a sole practitioner is really quite subjective. It all depend on the person's (and the business's) tax situation, business structure, and various other factors. For instance, the implication of "pay" for a sole-proprietor or llc is completely different from an one-man/woman c-corp. So without some kind of standardized way to define "pay" for a sole-practitioner, it's impossible to know if we are comparing apples-to-apples...
   

 

[E720]

Thanks Andy. Another possibility, regarding your second point, is that they may have changed the way they asked about income? I will try to contact them and maybe they will have a comment.