Dear Sir,

I read with interest your article on the presentation made by Jason Hayward as regards income inequality in Bermuda. I agree with Mr Hayward that education and training are vital in matching the skill set of the Bermuda workforce with the skills required in our ever-changing economy.

One issue that does concern me is that the statistics that are quoted as regards the amount of inequality appear exaggerated.

First, Mr Hayward claims that the median income for whites is $87,799 and blacks is $57,887, a 52 per cent difference. However, according to the preliminary report of the Department of Statistics labour force survey in 2015, the median income for whites is $74,385 and blacks is $56,442. A 31.8 per cent difference. And these statistics are for the entire 35,328 working population.

The expatriate workforce are included in those numbers and, by definition, are specialised, high-skill workers in that they are here because they possess needed skills that are unavailable locally. This group has a median income level of $93,248. And most of the very high-income expatriate workers are white.

Understandably, the black Bermudian community are very sensitive to the concept that they are disadvantaged by their race. And thus it is very important to have the statistics for Bermudian black median income versus Bermudian white median income in order that the expatriate “skew” numbers come out of the comparison. The comparison should be for only the 26,815 Bermudian workers. Using a rough estimate from the Department of Statistics data that I have, if you take out the expatriate skew, white Bermudian median income may be about $65,000 or 15 per cent higher than black Bermudian income, but not the 32 per cent in the gross statistics or the 52 per cent claimed by Mr Hayward.

Of course, it remains important to get to a point where there is racial equality in median income levels. And closing a 15 per cent gap is entirely possible with education, training and economic growth.

It is interesting that back in 2010, men had a median income that was 6.8 per cent higher than women in Bermuda. Now in 2015, women have a median income 2.5 per cent higher than men, a movement of 9.3 per cent in five years.

We in Bermuda have a service economy that needs to be very nimble and flexible to compete globally. We need to ensure that we are very careful not to legislate ourselves into inflexibility or a lack of competitive position that damages our economy as we seek to achieve what is a desirable balance in racial income.

Yours sincerely,

SCOTT LINES