Recruiting in China

Real wages in China saw an annual average growth of 10.6% in the last 8 years, the highest among the G20 countries, according to a research report by Korn Ferry Hay Group.

China’s salary growth was followed by Indonesia (9.3%), and Mexico (8.9%). The worst were Turkey (-34.4%), Argentina (-18.6%), Russia (-17.1%), and Brazil (-15.3%). Growth averages for all other developed nations fell in between these figures.

“In the countries that are seeing tremendous salary growth, the issue is supply and demand,” Benjamin Frost, Korn Ferry Hay Group Global Product Manager, said. “With countries like China seeing a whopping 75.9% GDP growth since the beginning of the recession, universities and corporations simply can’t train people fast enough. This leaves an acute talent shortage and points to the reason skilled employees are seeing steep pay increases.”

The firm’s research focused on the G20, nations with the world's leading economies, and compared inflation-adjusted pay and GDP in each. The US fared poorest in pay recovery among Western developed nations. Canada’s recovery was the best, with 7.2% real salary growth on average and a GDP gain of 11.2%. Other developed nations experienced flat to modest real salary growth, with Australia at 5.9%, France at 5.2%, Germany at 5%, Italy at 2.4%, and the UK down 0.1%.

“While global economists point to this recovery overall as one of the worst in history, there are political, economic, and social reasons for the disparate salary fluctuations in different countries,” Frost said. “It examined how salaries have fluctuated globally since Lehman Brothers fell eight years ago, marking for many experts the start of the worst economic crisis and recession in generations.”

The Korn Ferry Hay Group pay data was drawn from the firm’s PayNet database, which contains salary and job data for more than 20 million workers in more than 25,000 organizations across 110 countries.