INCREASING demand for workers amid a shrinking labor pool is driving salary offers higher than job seekers’ expectations.

“Offered salaries have been lower than job seekers’ expectations for a very long time,” said Wang Jiawen, a career information analyst at the city’s employment promotion center, which released a study on the jobs market yesterday.

“But we noticed they began to exceed expectations in the fourth quarter last year and the trend has become increasingly very obvious in the past 10 months.”