SHANGHAI - More than half of the residents of this city say they are dissatisfied with their wages, although more than a quarter of them have seen their pay increase in the last year, the city's statistics authority said on Thursday.

In a poll published on Thursday by the Shanghai General Survey under the National Bureau of Statistics, 67.7 percent of the respondents said they are either "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with their wages. The opinions were collected from 2,531 Shanghai residents.

Twenty-nine percent of the respondents, meanwhile, said their wages increased in 2010, while 50.4 percent said their pay hadn't changed.

Taken together, employees in Shanghai earn more than their peers in other parts of the country. The average monthly wage for a Shanghai worker was 3,566 yuan ($541) in 2009, making it the highest in the country. Although the figure for 2010 has yet to be published, it's likely to have increased; the city's GDP rose by 9.9 percent during the year.

But many residents argued that the high cost of buying a house and of living in Shanghai has made their incomes seem inadequate. "When the price of an apartment is 20,000 yuan a square meter, it really doesn't matter if you get paid 3,000 or 4,000 a month," Wang Yin, a 26-year-old office clerk who earns about 4,000 yuan a month, told China Daily on Thursday.

"Before I get married, I'll have to save a considerable part of my salary every month for a down payment on an apartment," he said. "And that cuts significantly into how much I can spend."

The Uwin Real Estate Research Center, a local real estate information provider, says the transaction price for new housing in Shanghai reached 20,129 yuan per sq m this past week.

"Shanghai is an expensive city," said Lu You, a 25-year-old white collar worker. "Apart from real estate prices, prices for food and transport are also high and have been getting higher. So having the highest wage doesn't really mean enjoying the highest standard of living."

Shanghai's consumer price index, a gauge of inflation and price levels, increased by 3.1 percent last year. Food prices accounted for 7.7 percent of the rise.

The survey showed that among the 29 percent of respondents whose wages had increased, only 9 percent said their pay had gone up by more than 10 percent.

Lu You said she pays 8 yuan a day for commuting, 30 yuan for food and 1,800 a month in rent for a one-bedroom apartment, while saving 1,000 yuan a month for rainy days. "That takes up the bulk of my 5,000-yuan salary, leaving me hardly any money for entertainment."

China Daily

(China Daily 02/18/2011 page4)