(Shanghai Daily news)
Local senior managers have the highest salaries of all workers in Yangtze River Delta cities, while returned overseas Chinese and recent university graduates saw their salaries drop this year.
Hewitt Associate Consulting and the Human Resource Proficient Club, two local consulting companies, determined that from a survey of more than 800 Chinese companies and 21 local joint ventures.
Annual income of local senior managers increased by 7.9 percent to 320,000 yuan (US$38,554) this year, 20 percent higher than other cities in the Yangtze River Delta, such as Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing.
Mid-level managers can earn more than 160,000 yuan a year in the city, compared with 80,000 yuan to 120,000 yuan annual payment in other cities in the region, the report said.
"As Shanghai takes a lead in the region's economic development, the cost of human resources has peaked," said Kalley Wu, an analyst at Hewitt Associate.
But other neighboring cities, such as Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, is catching up to Shanghai. Annual managerial wages are increasing at close to 8 percent.
Meanwhile, nearly half of joint ventures surveyed said they planned to recruit returned overseas Chinese for managerial positions, with an average monthly salary of 6,108 yuan.
Some returned university graduates were paid less than 3,000 yuan per month, with a maximum of 9,000 yuan for experienced returnees, the report said.
"With an increasing number of professionals returning from overseas, employers are attaching more importance to their personal abilities and reward them more rationally," Wu said.
A total of 700,200 Chinese people in the mainland studied abroad from 1978 to 2003, 172,800 of whom have returned, according to the consulting companies.
Shanghai has become the first working place choice for most of those who come back.
About 55 percent of employers surveyed said that returned overseas Chinese don't deserve a high salary.
Only those with a great deal of experience and expertise should be well paid, analysts said.
The report also indicated that joint ventures' offer to fresh university graduates dropped by 10 percent this year to 3,000 yuan on average.
Postgraduates employed at joint ventures earn some 3,722 yuan every month.
