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Wow Economics! Update the ‘Average Wage Game’ and ‘Values of Occupations’ game
16th December 2013
Calling all previous delegates of our Wow Economics CPD events! If you attended Wow Economics last academic year (2012-2013) you may recall an activity called 'The Average Wage Game'. If you have attended this academic year I'm sure you will remember the activity 'The Value of Occupations'. Both resources were aimed at introducing or stimulating initial discussion about wage determination before moving on to developing the theory behind Marginal Revenue Product and its value. Both activities relied upon data relating to UK wage rates by occupation. This data was based upon information taken from what was the latest ONS report on wages in the UK (November 2012). I said, at the time, that when the data was updated I would forward information for both games so that teachers can update them accordingly. This information is now here and ready for you to download!
The Average Wage Game asks students to take 14 occupations and simply state whether they think that their average wage is above or below the national average wage rate. When the game was first devised this rate was £407 per week but has now increased to £416 (remember, that's the average wage increase not the increase for MPs).
The 'Value of Occupations' asks students to rank certain jobs in order of their relative value to society (in their opinion) and then reveals the ranking of those occupations by their average wage. Generally, this will reveal that there is little correlation between the 'value' of a job to society and its relative wage.
Follow this link to download a Word document that gives instructions and includes tables of data that can be copied and pasted to the original Powerpoint files to update both games.
If you don't have a copy of either of these games, the Average Wage Game is available from the tutor2u store and the Value of Occupations comes as part of the pack delivered at upcoming Wow Economics events in Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Dubai and Singapore (dates on our website).