The latest official data on urban incomes in China points to the IT, scientific and technical services and finance sectors as being the most lucratively paid in the country, and government workers enjoying far higher and more rapidly growing incomes than private sector employees.
Data just released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics indicates that the average salary of non-private entity employees was 74,318 yuan, for a year-on-year increase of 10.0%, a growth acceleration of 1.1 percentage points compared to 2017, as well as inflation-adjusted growth of 8.2%.
The average salary of private entity employees was 45,761 yuan, for year-on-year growth of 6.8%, a growth deceleration of 1.4 percentage points compared to 2017, as well as inflation-adjusted growth of 5.0%.
“Last year, the in-depth advance of supply-side structural reforms, the rapid growth of new economic drivers and the marked improvement of the enterprise production and operation environment drove ongoing steady growth in the average salaries of urban employees,” said Meng Canwen (孟灿文), chief statistician from the population and employment bureau of NBS.
For urban employees of private sector enterprises, the three sectors that provided the highest average annual salaries were the software and IT services sector, at 70, 415 yuan; scientific research and technical services, at 58,102 yuan, and the finance sector (primarily comprising insurance agents, the pawn industry and investment consulting companies) at 52,289 yuan.
Amongst urban non-private entities the average annual salaries for these sectors were even higher, standing at 133,150 yuan for software and IT services, 122,851 yuan for finance and 107,815 for scientific research and technical services.
The three sectors with the lowest salaries for private employees were farming, forestry, husbandry and fishing at 34,272 yuan, the hostility and catering sector, at 36,886 yuan, and the household services, repairs and other services sector, at 38,417 yuan.
