(Yicai Global) April 10 -- Hangzhou's salary increases and growth in the number of job-seekers both ranked first in China in the first quarter, according to a report by a recruitment firm.

The lakeside garden city in Southeast China and other new first-tier cities have striven to attract talent with favorable resettlement, employment support, and home buying policies, and the ranks of job seekers and salaries have thus burgeoned, Beijing News reported yesterday, citing the study by the classified ad site run by Beijing-based 58.Com.

The number of job-seekers in Hangzhou jumped by 35 percent on the same period last year, making the leafy city, which is home to tech titan Alibaba Group Holding, number one in placement-search popularity last quarter. The ranks of those looking for gainful employment in Changsha grew by 34.3 percent over last year, making the central Chinese city one of the top ten most popular employment work-search cities and the second in growth rate.

The salaries paid by Hangzhou companies climbed 26 percent last quarter from the previous year in the highest growth rate nationwide. The city's average monthly salary was CNY8,684 (USD1,293), scoring it second in China and up one place from last year.

The average monthly salary of companies in Shanghai was CNY9,723 last quarter, placing the eastern mega-metropolis first in the country.

The top 10 cities with the greatest recruitment needs were Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Dongguan, in a sequence unchanged from last year. First-tier cities still boast the most recruitment demand and Guangzhou came in first in that category with a 25 percent increase. The reason for its huge demand is that the city is accelerating its construction under the impetus of the unified planning policy to develop the Pearl River Delta area -- that spans Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau -- the report added.

Yicai Global's Rising Lab re-graded the new first-tier cities from among 338 Chinese municipalities based on business data from agencies, user behavior data from internet companies and urban Big Data from analyst institutions.

The 15 new first-tier cities last year thus were Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Suzhou, Xi'an, Tianjin, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Shenyang, Qingdao, Ningbo, Dongguan and Wuxi.

Editor: Ben Armour