Salaries for Shanghai local office workers rose by nearly 4 percent on average over the past 12 months, according to a recently published survey.
   
Zhaopin.com, one of China's leading Web-based headhunters, surveyed more than 2 million office workers over Internet about their salaries and any raises they have received this year.
   
The highest salary increase was earned by those working in the environmental protection industry, where annual incomes rose by 14 percent on average, according to the survey. The average monthly income in the sector grew from 2,815 yuan (US$339) in 2004 to an average of 3,203 yuan this year, Zhaopin reported.
   
"A massive amount of city construction has created large demand for environment assessment, environmentally friendly projects and technology professionals, so it is not surprising to see salaries rise with people's growing environmental protection awareness," said Liu Hao, Zhaopin's CEO.
   
He expects salaries in the sector to continue to rise over the next several years, pointing out that the central government has allocated up to 90 billion yuan to improve Beijing environment ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
   
The second highest salary increases went to those working in the computer software sector, followed by computer hardware designers and sports and entertainment professionals.
   
For individual occupations, telecom engineers say their salaries increase by 15 percent to reach 4,521 yuan a month on average this year.
   
Others received decidedly smaller raises this year. Office secretaries, human resource managers, as well as sales, marketing and business development professionals saw their monthly income rise by about 3 to 5 percent since last spring.
   
The report also indicated that employees of foreign-invested companies earned more than those working for state-owned or domestic companies, with an average monthly income of 3,637 yuan this year. That represents an 11 percent increase from last spring.

(Shanghai Daily May 16, 2005)