Jia Lide and his wife, Li Ting, are young engineers working on the launch of the Shenzhou IX spacecraft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Northwest China's Gansu province. The couple has little time to be with their 3-year-old daughter. Wang Jianmin / Xinhua

More than 80 per cent of engineers in China have an annual income of less than 70,000 yuan ($10, 983), according to a report by an education institute of Tsinghua University.

Engineers in professional engineering industry have lower income than other engineers, according to the report.

According to the report, only 10 per cent of engineers earned over 110,000 yuan in 2012.

Compared with their relative low income, most of engineers carry high level academic diplomas. The report indicates that around 35.7 per cent of engineers in equipment manufacturing sector scored in the 90th percentile on exams during their education, 40.8 per cent of them in the 90th to 70th percentile. Over half of them scored in the 50th percentile. It can be said that engineers as a whole performed well during their educations.

The report shows over 19 per cent of engineers born in 1980s and being employed after 2000 hold a master degree or a doctor degree.

Engineers with a low level degree tend to attend further education after they have worked for a period of time, while those with higher degrees rarely seek for further education, according to the report.