A job seeker looks through employment information at a job fair held for fresh graduates in Liaocheng city, East China's Shandong province, March 14, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

The average salary among 32 major cities in China stands at 6,070 yuan ($922.64) for job vacancies posted online for the winter of 2015, with Beijing topping the list at 9,227 yuan, followed by Shanghai (8,664 yuan) and Shenzhen (7,728 yuan), thepaper.cn reported according to online data released by zhaopin.com, a leading job hunting website.

Hangzhou salary surpasses that of Guangzhou

The average salary of second-tier city Hangzhou (7,097 yuan) ranks fourth, surpassing that of Guangzhou (6,913 yuan), which is usually classified as a first-tier city. The result showed that Guangzhou did not catch up with the development pace of the other three first-tier cities, which took the top three spots.

In terms of regional trends, well-developed eastern coastal cities like Suzhou, Ningbo and Nanjing and rising southwestern cities like Chengdu and Chongqing entered the top ten in the salary rank list.

In comparison, the salaries of northeastern cities like Harbin, Changchun and Shenyang rank at the bottom, which revealed these old industrial bases experienced hard times throughout the economic transformation.

Private employees earn most, with foreign companies ranking third

Consulting or professional service industries, including accounting, law and human resources, topped the ranks with an average salary of 10,634 yuan, with the investment industry ranking second (9,204 yuan) and intermediary agent industry third (8,658 yuan).

With the fast development of the private economy, private enterprises give the most competitive salary of 7,322 yuan. The salary of wholly foreign-owned enterprises ranks third at 6,400 yuan after joint venture companies at 7,134 yuan. The fall of the wholly foreign-owned enterprises reflects their uneven development in China in recent years.