by ABC Fact Check has a piece looking at a claim by the Young Greens that “making lattes provides more Australian jobs than the entire coal industry.” The detail of the tweet included the claim that there were 86000 barista jobs compared to 52000 in the coal mining industry The Fact Check Unit observed that the quoted firgure is for total employment in the cafe industry, not just barista. By comparing an estimate of the number of baristas to total employment in coal mining, the Fact Check Unit concludes that the claim is Incorrect. There is an apples and oranges problem here. There are two reasonable ways to do this comparison (a) Treat “barista” as shorthand for “someone who works in a coffee shop”. Then compare employment in the coffee shop sector, including “permanent,
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ABC Fact Check has a piece looking at a claim by the Young Greens that “making lattes provides more Australian jobs than the entire coal industry.” The detail of the tweet included the claim that there were 86000 barista jobs compared to 52000 in the coal mining industry
The Fact Check Unit observed that the quoted firgure is for total employment in the cafe industry, not just barista. By comparing an estimate of the number of baristas to total employment in coal mining, the Fact Check Unit concludes that the claim is Incorrect.
There is an apples and oranges problem here. There are two reasonable ways to do this comparison
(a) Treat “barista” as shorthand for “someone who works in a coffee shop”. Then compare employment in the coffee shop sector, including “permanent, part-time, temporary and casual employees, working proprietors, partners, managers and executives within the industry” with employment in the coal mining sector, including managerial, professional and clerical staff, general trades workers and others.
(b) Define “baristas” to refer to the occupation of making coffee, and “coal miners” to refer to the occupation of “Drillers, Miners and Shot Firers”, that is, people whose occupation is extracting coal from the ground. Based on the proportion for mining as a whole, the latter is about 20 per cent of total employment in the mining industry.
Either approach, applied consistently, would imply that there are more baristas than coal miners. The fact check uses the first, broader definition for miners and the second narrower one for baristas. This is an apples and oranges comparison, and should be corrected.