(Yicai) Dec. 28 -- Twenty-four percent of all employed people in China last year were graduates of higher education and the share is rising among young people, according to official statistics.

Nearly 49 percent of workers aged between 25 and 29 pursued academic degrees after secondary education, according to a report published by the National Bureau of Statistics. Some 26 percent of all employed people aged between 40 and 44 went to school after high school. But the same is true for less than 10 percent of people aged above 54.

People under 40 are more educated than the average as junior colleges, colleges, and universities are adding more slots, per the same source.

More people have started pursuing master's degrees in recent years. The country has cultivated more than 11 million people with a master’s degree, per statistics from the education ministry. The nation had nearly 3.7 million postgraduates last year. The stats bureau shows that 1.3 percent of all employed people have a master’s degree, and the biggest age bracket for such merit is people aged between 25 and 29.

Among almost 20 industries, scientific research and technical services attract the most highly educated workforce as almost 11 percent of workers have a master's degree. After that, the education sector follows with a share of 7.5 percent while the finance sector has 7.2 percent, and the corresponding number for the information transmission, software, and information technology service sector is 6.4 percent.

These industries require highly skilled people and offer higher salaries, Ding Changfa, associate professor at Xiamen University, said to Yicai. These sectors, except for education, are the highest-paid in China. But many young people choose to become teachers not because of high pay but due to job stability and long holidays, a teacher at a secondary school in downtown Guangzhou said to Yicai.

Editor: Emmi Laine