Average Wages in the UK - a starter activity for new Economics students

Here's a short starter activity on average wages that could be used for introductory lessons for new Economics students. Assuming that factors of production and the rewards to each factor have been covered already, this activity enables a discussion about why the reward to labour (in terms of wages) might vary for different jobs.

Students are shown 10 professions/jobs on screen, listed in a random order. They have 60 seconds to re-order the professions, ranking them by their average pay (with the highest paid job ranked first). After revealing the answers, there are a few discussion questions that follow and a quick introduction to statistics offered by the ONS.

Download the 'Average Wage Rank It' activity here.

This is the fourth in our short series of starter activities for new Economics students.