Four in five young migrant workers expect higher salaries and said they would like to change their jobs upon their return to Shanghai after the Spring Festival, a survey released yesterday by job search engine Daguu.com showed.

Nearly 1,000 migrant workers with jobs in Shanghai were polled. Their average age is 26 and two-thirds are male.

Twenty-six percent said they want to change jobs to get a higher salary in order to cope with rising living costs in the city. Another 28 percent said they like to change and want to try a different kind of job.

The survey said "boring," "stressful" and "low paid" are the most common words young migrants used to describe their current jobs in Shanghai. They also explain the job-hopping in low-level positions, the survey said.

Unlike previous generations of migrant workers who often held the same job for years, many young migrants are easily bored with repetitive, manual labor, such as working on an assembly line or as waiters. They long for a higher career ceiling and more spare time for socializing and traveling.

According to job hunting website 51job.com, more than 2.26 million positions were posted daily on its website in the week after the national Spring Festival holidays, up 21.5 percent from last year.

"First-tier cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou still lead with the most positions, but second-tier cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu and Xi'an have the biggest increase," said Jennifer Feng, a senior analyst with 51job.com. The biggest need is in the real estate industry as new home prices have kept rising.

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