Over-supply in the job market seems not to have affected the earnings of people working in monopoly industries or the real estate sector.

A report on the state of the country's wage market last year released yesterday by the Beijing-based TaiHe Consulting, a consultants' company, showed some of the big earners are in China.

According to the report, wages climbed fastest in Beijing's real estate market.

People working in the capital's property market saw their wages grow by 11.9 percent on a year-on-year basis, slightly higher than their counterparts in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Real estate prices in Beijing maintained a double-digit growth rate on a monthly basis last year, but market leaders have publicly denied that they were a "high-profit" industry.

Meanwhile, people employed in the power-generation, mining, and gasoline industries earned twice what their colleagues in other parts of the energy sector earned, said the report.

The report also said subsidies and other forms of government welfare contributed the lion's share of the earnings of people employed in monopoly industries. Their actual salaries were modest in comparison to their additional earnings.

The report also highlighted the rising salaries of senior managers in Beijing's high-tech industry.

They earned an average of 600,000 yuan ($76,900) a year, 100,000 yuan ($12,820) higher than their counterparts in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

By contrast, newly graduated bachelor's or master's degree holders in Beijing earned much less.

Due to a spike in the number of graduating students in the capital city, recent bachelor's graduates can expect to earn only 2,500 yuan ($320), while master's degree grads can expect 4,500 yuan ($576), a slight decrease compared to the figures from last year, said the report.

The report echoed the findings of a document on the country's income distribution issued last week by the National Development and Reform Commission's Academy of Macro-economic Research.

The document noted that the wage disparities between different enterprises and industries was growing. It said the government had failed to properly adjust the income distribution.

(China Daily 02/07/2007 page3)