Someone wrote a week ago about stats on the business.  I think I posted these in early 2002, but here they are again.  These are based on 2001 data.

Professional - In the US there are an estimated 32,756 Indy's, 126,920 providers working for agencies, 37,392 streetwalkers, and 3,192 sensual massage providers comprising an estimated $17 billion industry.  Approximately 4.2% of US women will work as professional providers at some point in their lives.  Professional is defined as someone for whom providing is a primary source of income or who publicly advertises their services.

There is also the 'non-pro' provider market comprised of women (and men) for whom this is not a primary source of income and do not advertise publicly.  The most typical example is a receptionist in an office who sees 2 or 3 people from that office once a month for some additional side income. One source estimated this at 114,000 women, but I do not believe there is a way to accurately measure it.  There are also those who offer sex in exchange for non-monetary benefit.  This would include the well-known uses for a promotion or part in a movie as well as the many sales women who'd offer something extra for a purchase.  One survey (I think conducted by the Guttmacher Institute) indicated that 37% of US women admit to having obtained something of value in exchange for sexual intercourse with someone other than their partner.

On the flip side - 17% of US adult men visited a prostitute in the US in 2001 and 72% will at least once in their lives.

JTH


-- Modified on 3/9/2004 11:48:10 AM

And, as one of the 5 richest men in the world, his budget could certainly allow for an overnight with a top provider every day of the year.  Heck, he'd be hard pressed to spend more than a few million dollars a year on providers, and that would merely be a rounding error when he figures out what he's worth.

Hi

Are you implying that sales women at Oracle routinely provide a complimentary fuck or BJ for a sale?  What's th source of this?  Just curious

something on which to base a date>?  Or was that date a base?

How did you get to your #s?

You shouldn't read too much into that comment.  I edited it out to avoid any further misunderstandings.

We did a fairly in-depth analysis of 2 representative cities, extrapolated the results, and then did confirmation comparatives against 2 additional cities.  Data were collected through conversations with a number of providers and agencies as well running a general population survey asking questions such as how many times someone had paid for sex, been paid for sex, etc.  The toughest part was eliminating overlap since many providers would have a Indy website, but also be on the rota for one or more agencies.  One gal had something like 3 different web ads under 3 different names and pricing structures, worked 2 days a week in a massage place (where she told customers very explicitely that she didn't offer FS, only HJ), and was listed with a couple of different agencies to take calls when she was available.  Those 2 agencies then had ads under a combined list of about 9 different names and phone numbers.



-- Modified on 3/9/2004 12:03:24 PM

Yeah, in the early summer of 93' I was at a coffee house in the process of proving Fermat's last theorem when a (divine) revelation came to me.  I started jotting down similar figures, relevant to Boston, where except for the extrapolation part my figures were based on in depth personal experience with providers in Boston coupled with empirical Bayes methods (data from brief surveys in all major cities).  

   But God damn it someone spilled coffee on my provider results and also got my proof.  I looked up and it was Andrew Wiles (WTF is he doing in Cambridge MASS).  That MF'er - I lost the provider #'s and don't believe I will ever have that divine revelation again !!!!

I'm in Framingham, What are you doing in Cambridge?  I have the actual proof you were working on. it's just a wee bit two long to write down here.  It's an elliptic sort of thing...  Harry

Make similar mistakes probably...Harry

Using the rough numbers 228,000 and $17B industry - that would mean the average woman in the industry makes approxomately $75k/year.

No way to know, but that doesn't sound out of line.

foiled again by Harry.  Not only that, every time I ask a provider ``was I good baby'' she replies ``yeah, but your no Harry''.  I no longer ask.

"Thought it was me":  Bell Biv Devoe-

Appreciate your efforts -- always find it an interesting subject.

So your data includes "a general population survey".  Assume it was probably an oral survey rather than a mass mailing.  How did you find your participating subjects?  At a religious service or at a bar or strip club?  How did you approach them in order to elicit trust and honesty in responses?

Nice work -- thank you!

-- Modified on 3/9/2004 5:37:34 PM

Social surveys are notoriously poor ways to get valid data. Check out the Garbage experiment which dove tailed a social survey with an anthropological examination of garbage with respect to alcohol usage in a neighborhood.
Turns out most people lie when it comes to socially unacceptable issues.


So, how did you correct for untruthfullness?


TET


-- Modified on 3/9/2004 5:38:17 PM

But all the ladies say you are the best llicker in the business

they could be saying you no harry because you shave carefully.  I only trim occasionally.

-- Modified on 3/9/2004 5:49:54 PM

Lying is actually quite easy to account for and correct.  See one of my earlier posts.  It's a simple trick.

Earnings aren't normal.  An agency lady makes less than an independent ...

Yes, in the Garbage Experiment they accounted for lying by actually having anthropologists examine the garbage for evidence of alcohol use. The results were disparate!

I searched for earlier post about how social scientists could account for lying but couldn't find it.

TET

During the height of the internet craze, one of the frequently asked questions was if "Larry was on the yacht". The idea was that, if Larry was on the yacht, he was not tending to business, and you should sell Oracle.

If Larry is indeed a hobbyist while "on the yacht", however, we now have a solid rationale for dumping Oracle. Recent psychological studies indicate that men become demonstrably less intelligent, when around beautiful women.

Tell the people answering the question to roll a die and lie if the # turns up one and tell the truth otherwise.  The 1 will come up one time out of 6 (assuming the die isn't rigged).  You can use this information to figure the correct answer from the responses.  Further, you can't tell from anybody's responses whether they have lied or told the truth.  The statistics come out right but the individual responses are hidden.

Here is an example.  You ask: "Do you pick your nose during sex?".  Suppose 1/3 of the people responding say yes.  Then 1/3=5y/6+(1-y)/6 where y is the true proportion of people who do this.  The true proportion is 1/4 {solve the equation}.

Please don't some SOB shoot me down if I did the math wrong.



-- Modified on 3/10/2004 1:30:19 PM

Regardless of the math, how do you know the people who are supposed to tell the truth when the die does NOT show 1.... are telling the truth?



TET

You don't for sure, but as the individual's truthful answer is not known by examination of his survey, you have removed his motivation for lying.

when you are answering embarassing questions on a survey.  It does't protect against people who want to want to subvert the results.  

The best protection against your kind of behavior is to find smart-asses like you TET and sentence them no pretty ladies for six months.  

Sorry it took me so long to reply.  

The gp data were collected in 5 locations - 3 shopping malls, 1  clipper (eg, girl with clipboard asking q's on the street), and 1 collector at a government center.  For the malls people were asked if they'd like to participate in exchange for discount coupons to mall merchants.  In an empty storefront we had 15 carrels spread out enough to give respondents privacy.  Paper response forms were dropped in a locked bin.  Gov't ctr was similar except carrels were setup in an atrium so it didn't have the same feel of privacy.

Someone else had asked about lying.  This is ALWAYS a problem on any survey.  A live response (eg, clipper) is always the worst (though good collectors can tell if someone's blowing or not) followed by a phone interview, then filling out a form with a 'watcher' in the room, then the best which is a room with no 'watcher' and a locked bin to deposit the response.  There is no really good way to correct for it.  We design instruments in such as way that we can see patterns that indicate a probable inaccurate response and we also correlate the instrument to previous instruments (in this case to both Janus and Hart).  

Sometime I'd like to run this instrument with two clippers; 1 male, 1 female, and see how people respond differently.

Yes, no pretty ladies for 6 months WOULD motivate me to tell the truth!



TET