More than 80 farmers receive about 2.89 million yuan year-end bonus on Jan 8, 2015, in Haikou, Hainan province. [Photo/CFP]

Employees in Shanghai lead the country in earning the highest amount of year-end bonus with 8,515 yuan ($1,346) on average, followed by their peers in Shenzhen with 8,265 yuan and Beijing with 7,855 yuan, according to a recent survey by a human resource company.

Internet finance was the sector that paid its workers the highest average year-end bonus of 40,000 yuan, according to the Beijing-based PXC consulting firm, which conducted the research among more than 6,432 companies across China.

Although year-end bonus is not legally required, over 84 percent of the companies chose to reward their workers. In contrast, 15.7 percent of them did not plan to do so.

46.7 percent of the employees' year-end reward was between 5000 to 10,000 yuan and 26.8 percent of them received between 10,000 to 30,000 yuan.

Some 78 percent of the companies provided bonuses in cash, 8.6 percent gave shopping cards and about 4 percent offered free trips as rewards.

Employees of the Internet finance sector got an average of 40,000 yuan as their year-end bonus, the highest among all industries. Employees working in banking, insurance, automobiles and advertising were also among the highest paid.

The survey found a big gap between different levels of employees in the same company in terms of year-end bonus they got.

A director-level staff member received an average of 78,345 yuan, over twice of a manager and 18 times of a low-level employee, it showed.