Two official instruments can describe secondary or residual pay for the same calendar year and still refuse to meet on one depth mark. Pay Depth treats that mismatch as a feature of survey design—not as a puzzle to be closed with a slogan.
Coverage and edit rules
Household surveys omit some populations by design. Tax files omit others. Edit rules suppress outliers, impute missing cells, and redefine employment status after fieldwork. Each step moves the painted mark. Technical appendices that name those steps are the board’s primary source; press summaries that omit them are secondary.
Why marks diverge
Reference periods differ (week versus year). Units differ (person versus return). Cost concepts differ (none versus selected deductions). Stacking rates across instruments without a published crosswalk invents a depth the data never measured. This desk records the gap; it does not claim a single residual figure for any reader. Corrections: support@paydepth.online.