Pay structures at China’s state-owned financial institutions are expected to be further flattened, according to Caixin, in another round of salary adjustments. The new guidelines will follow efforts by the government to rein in salary levels at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) this year.
The changes will have an impact on the willingness of talent to work at these institutions and the logical next step would be an increase in SOE employees looking to work elsewhere, but there are few options to choose from. In the past, we have seen periods where top talent has moved away from China’s state jobs to startups and international banks, however over the past few years these companies and the job opportunities they provided have been getting very scarce.
The idea of state-related jobs being an iron rice bowl will always be there, but how lucrative they can be is changing, and this is an insight into the current state of the wider economy.