Finance industry employees in China top salary rankings

Finance industry employees in China earned much more than workers in other industries last year thanks to the lucrative financial market, an annual salary report has revealed.

The report, released by leading human-resources service provider Zhaopin.com in Shanghai, was based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies across all sectors throughout the country last year.

It found workers in the financial industry were paid an average salary of 4,987 yuan (US$694) per month. The figure is about 40 percent higher than the national average.

“The stock market in the Chinese mainland had undergone deeper reform and it remained hot last year. That contributed to the salary rises in the financial sector,” said Liu Hao, Zhaopin’s CEO.

Liu said it was not unusual to see fund managers and analysts earning more than one million yuan a year.

The high-tech sector ranked second on the list. Average income in the information technology industry also reached 4,282 yuan (around 600 US dollars) por month last year, the report said. As comparison, the average salary of a software engineer in San Francisco — California — goes around 9700 US dollars a month.

“Leading enterprises like electronic commerce and the online gaming industry drove the whole industry towards fast growth,” Liu said, adding that more than half of the enterprises used long-term incentive salary policies.

Third on the list was the real-estate industry, where salaries jumped by 15 percent on average to 4,051 yuan (around 570 US dollars) per month last year.

Zhaopin analysts said that industry growth in second-tier cities such as Tianjin, Dalian, Shenyang, Changsha and Wuhan largely contributed to the rise in average wages.

Also high on the earnings list were employees in the media and public relations, motoring, consumer goods, medicine, energy, and the chemical and manufacturing industries.

The report also revealed that new college graduates were paid 2,169 yuan (around 300 US dollars) per month on average in major Chinese cities. Masters degree graduates were paid on average 2,853 yuan (a little over 400 US dollars) per month and PhD graduates earned 3,878 (around 540 US dollars) yuan por month.