Employees at mainland brokerage firms enjoyed higher incomes last year as the stock market boom boosted growth in their companies’ earnings, the Securities Daily reported on Wednesday. The average per capita income of staff in the industry reached about 260,000 yuan (HK$329,000) last year, according to the newspaper’s calculation based on data from the Securities Association of China, brokerage firms’ annual results announcements and financial data provider Wind Information. The figure was more than double the 115,000 yuan in 2013, the report said. Of the 27 brokerages that have announced their annual results, mid-size broker Industrial Securities ranked the top with average annual earnings for its staff of 428,200 yuan, the report said. Shanghai-based Guotai Junan Securities was second with an average of 406,400 yuan. Citic Securities, the mainland’s biggest brokerage by revenue, ranked No 3 with an average salary of 398,700 yuan, according to the Securities Daily’s calculations. In terms of percentage growth in total staff earnings, Shenzhen-based Goldstate Securities topped the list with an increase of 297 per cent from a year ago to 235 million yuan. Guangdong-based Lianxun Securities ranked second with an increase of 282 per cent while Xiangcai Securities, headquartered in Changsha, posted a 275 per cent rise. The increase in salaries was backed by brokerages’ decent earnings last year as the A-share market boomed. Goldstate Securities almost quadrupled its profit last year from the previous year, while Lianxun Securities’ profit increased by about nine times, the newspaper said. Citic Securities said its profit for last year more than doubled to 11.3 billion yuan and Hong Kong-listed Guotai Junan Securities said in a statement to the stock exchange that its profit for last year grew by 49.1 per cent to HK$799 million. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index surged by more than 60 per cent last year, helped by the mainland’s monetary easing and capital market reforms. The momentum has continued into the first quarter of this year, with 18 listed-brokerage firms’ total net profit increasing by 224 per cent from the same period of last year, according to data from UBS Securities. Last month, the daily turnover of the mainland’s stock markets reached 979.9 billion yuan, up 89 per cent from February and a new record for a single month. “We believe that trading will continue to be active in the rest of the year,” UBS analysts said in a research report. "With increasing turnover and growing scale in the financing business, we expect high growth in mainland brokerages’ earnings in 2015.”