China's salaries to grow by 9.5% next year: consulting firm

A textiles factory in Guangxi. (File photo/Xinhua)

Global management consulting firm Hay Group expects average salaries in China to grow by 9.5% next year, reports Japan's Nikkei news agency.
Wages in emerging markets will skyrocket compared to the moderate wage increases for European workers, with the salaries expected to grow by 9% in South America and 7.5% in Asia in 2013, the consulting firm said.
China is expected to have the highest salary growth rate of 9.5%, up 1.1 percentage points from a year earlier and three times the country's forecast inflation rate, said the consulting firm.
Ben Frost, a global product manager at Hay Group, said that inflation, economic conditions and demand are the main factors for the wage increases. Salary growth in emerging markets has been higher than that in developed markets for the last 10 years and the situation will not change in the near future, he said, adding that companies in emerging markets will also invest more on employee training.
As a whole, Asia's salary growth will be extreme at both ends of the scale, with Japan's rate expected to be only 2%.
The firm also expects Europe and North America to record lower salary growth rates next year. The expected real salary growth rate of the US and UK are only 1% and 0.2% respectively, after taking inflation into account.