For two decades, the fastest route to a pay rise was simple: leave. In 2026, that door has quietly swung shut.
For most of our careers the playbook was reliable. Feeling underpaid? You interviewed elsewhere, secured an offer, and either walked for fifteen to twenty per cent more or used it to negotiate a counter. Job-hopping was the single most effective pay-rise strategy going. It no longer works.
The market has settled into what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” freeze. The latest JOLTS figures put the US quits rate at just 2 per cent — near a decade low. When almost nobody is quitting, it is usually because almost nobody has anywhere better to jump to. Indeed’s Hiring Lab pegs annual wage growth at a modest 3.2 per cent for August 2026, barely ahead of inflation. Movement, in other words, has frozen at both ends of the ladder.
Here in Singapore the freeze has teeth. Retrenchments hit a five-year high in the second quarter of 2026, with 4,500 workers let go, according to Ministry of Manpower data. A recent Singapore National Employers Federation survey found 96 per cent of businesses wrestling with higher operating costs, much of it energy. Employers are not writing generous counter-offers this year — they are counting every dollar.
So if the exit door is jammed, how do you still get paid more? You stop waiting for the market to move and start moving yourself. Three shifts make the difference.
1. Loyalty Now Has A Price Tag — And You Are Paying It
Here is the cruel irony. Staying put used to be the safe, sensible choice. Now it is quietly expensive. If your only rises come from annual increments of three or four per cent, while the market rewards a movement you can no longer make, you are slowly sliding backwards in real terms. We say this to clients constantly: comfort is not the same as progress. The solution — know your number. Get a current, honest read on your market worth, not what you earned three years ago. You cannot negotiate what you have never measured.
2. You Cannot Job-Hop, So Move Inside Instead
The external door is stuck. The internal one often is not. Companies that have frozen outside hiring still have gaps to fill — and it is far cheaper to promote or redeploy you than to recruit a stranger. The professionals winning rises in 2026 are the ones raising their hand internally: for the stretch project, the cross-functional role, the team nobody else wants to lead. The solution — make your ambitions known to your manager, in writing, before the next budget cycle closes, not after it.
3. Get Paid For Scarcity, Not Seniority
In a frozen market, employers pay for what is scarce, not for how long you have been around. AI fluency, revenue-generating skills, anything genuinely hard to replace — that is where the money still moves. Seniority alone is a cost line; scarce capability is leverage. Ask yourself what you could do this year that a cheaper hire, or a machine, could not. The solution — pick one high-value, market-priced skill and get properly good at it this quarter. One real skill beats another year of the same.
The Bottom Line
Money in a frozen market does not arrive the way it used to. Three things to hold on to:
- The job-hop raise is not returning soon — build a plan that does not depend on it.
- Your market worth is data. Know it, even if you have every intention of staying.
- You grow your pay by growing your value — inside your company, and in the skills too scarce to ignore.
You have more leverage than a frozen market wants you to believe. Use it.
Stay agile, my friends!
