Statistics don’t give the full picture of life in Bermuda, Craig Cannonier has warned.

The Premier said the fact that incomes have risen, according to Government’s latest spending survey, doesn’t depict the true gravity of Bermuda’s problems.

“Statistics can tell us the truth; they can also hide the truth,” Mr Cannonier said last night.

His response was made to reports on the 2013 Household Expenditure Survey, issued on Friday by the Department of Statistics, which showed a 35 percent increase in weekly household income since the last survey in 2004.

Mr Cannonier said he didn’t dispute the statistics.

“But statistics can also distract from the truth,” he added.

“In this instance, it is the truth that thousands of Bermudians are not better off than they were a decade ago. Thousands remain unemployed, or earning less, and thousands who depend on them have to get by with less.”

The Premier’s statement, shown in full in today’s Letters to the Editor, alluded to “deep-seated, inherited trends”.

Such trends had resulted in “two Bermudas”: one thriving, and the other “struggling every day to make ends meet”.

Friday’s report came with some qualifying remarks of its own: while weekly household income rose from $2,043 in 2004 to $2,767 last year, or 35 percent, prices also surged 31 percent on average.

After factoring out inflation, the report observed that the 2013 average weekly income earned by households was reduced to “$2,112, in real terms”.

“Nonetheless, the real dollar value still showed a level of growth in weekly household income from the real 2004 level.”

Households also dropped in size between surveys: the 2004 average of 2.33 people dropped to 2.21 by last year.

The Statistics report further noted: “Extended family households increased sharply by 10 percentage points in 2013.

“This increase indicates a shift of related families changing their living arrangements to reside together, perhaps to share household costs as a result of unemployment and the downturn in the economy.”

Last night, a Government spokesman reiterated that the Premier had taken no issue with the survey itself.

“The point here is that you can throw statistics around all day to portray something a certain way, and some statistics will speak more loudly than others,” the spokesman said, adding that Mr Cannonier was pointing out “a larger reality beyond the statistics”.