So how much are China’s young and bright college graduates earning in today’s jobs landscape?
We’re going to break down 2023 data sets from two of China’s largest HR companies: Liepin & 51job. They are both among China’s biggest job portals and have some of the largest amounts of local, first-hand, high-quality data points. It’s important to note that the data reflects recruited salaries, or the publicly listed salary information that companies advertise on their platforms.
For visual data used, I’ve included the original Chinese versions and also added Google-translated English versions. In case you’re curious, we did a sister article on salary ranges for China’s graduate degree holders.
Let’s dive into some data!
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Average Salary for University Graduates in China, 2021-2023
The average salary for new University graduates in 2023 was ¥10,342 RMB ($1,435 USD) per month.
This first set of data above looks two things:
Blue line = The average actual monthly salary of new college graduates in China, country-wide, 2021-2023.
Orange line = The average expected monthly salary of new college graduates in China, country wide, 2021-2023.
Key Points
- The average monthly salary for the class of 2021 was ¥9,292 yuan ($1,289 USD) per month and for the class of 2023 ¥10,342 RMB ($1,435 USD) per month.
- The average salary increased 11.3% (¥1,050) from 2021-2023, but actually dropped slightly between 2022 & 2023.
- The expected monthly salary of fresh University graduates is lower than the actual salary, which is quite unique! This may be the result of prolonged economic uncertainties in China for the past few years, dating back to 2020.
Average Salary for University Graduates in China, by Industry
The average salary in China for Artificial Intelligence (AI) graduates in 2023 topped all professions: ¥18,592 RMB ($2,579 USD) per month.
Highest-Paying Industries for China’s College Graduates
There are obvious ones on this list like AI and blockchain – it’s no secret that these newer fields need a lot of help to develop. The Elderly Care industry coming in at #3 is interesting and reflects the great demand companies have for assistance and better solutions to take care of China’s aging population.
Average monthly salary by industry:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): ¥18,592 yuan ($2,579 USD)
- Blockchain: ¥17,467 yuan ($2,423 USD)
- Elderly Care: ¥16,992 yuan ($2,357 USD)
- Aviation/Aerospace: ¥16,042 yuan ($2,226 USD)
- Telecommunications: ¥15,792 yuan ($2,191 USD)
- Computing Hardware: ¥14,508 yuan ($2,013 USD)
- Medical Outsourcing: ¥14,175 yuan ($1,967 USD)
- Semiconductors: ¥14,008 yuan ($1,943 USD)
- Smart Hardware: ¥13,933 yuan ($1,933 USD)
- Academic Research: ¥13,708 yuan ($1,902 USD)
- Medical Technology: ¥13,125 yuan ($1,821 USD)
- Media & Publishing: ¥13,017 yuan ($1,806USD)
- Cloud Computing & Big Data: ¥12,975 yuan ($1,800 USD)
- Vehicle Manufacturing: ¥12,850 yuan ($1,783 USD)
- Fintech: ¥12,717 yuan ($1,764 USD)
- New Energy Vehicles (NEV): ¥12,483 yuan ($1,732 USD)
- Banking: ¥12,458 yuan ($1,728 USD)
- New Energy (non-vehicle): ¥12,275 yuan ($1,703 USD)
- Network & Information Security: ¥12,258 yuan ($1,701 USD)
- Software: ¥11,683 yuan ($1,621 USD)
Fastest-Growing Industries for China’s College Graduates
The average salary for new graduates in China's Elderly Care industry nearly doubled between 2021-2023.
Salary growth over 3 years 2021-2023:
- Elderly Care: 88.1%
- Media & Publishing: 82.7%
- Medical Outsourcing: 58.5%
- Blockchain: 49.7%
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): 47.9%
Top 20 Highest-Paying Cities for University Graduates in China
Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai top this list - each with an average of monthly salary of over ¥12,000 yuan ($1,665 USD).
Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Guangzhou rank as the top four in salary. These 4 China mega-cities accounted for nearly one-third of all new college graduate jobs posted on Liepin in 2023 (32.45%).
Hangzhou, Hefei, Nanjing, Xi’an, Suzhou, Wuhan, and Ningbo closed out the top 10, all exceeding an average of ¥10,000 yuan ($1,387 USD).10,342 yuan) per month.
Interestingly, while there is a decent amount of correlation, there are some key differences when compared to the general top 10 highest-paying cities in China (this data set included ALL jobs info, not just new University graduate positions).
Related Resources:
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