2 December 2025 

    A Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) survey, from 25 June to 15 August 2025, found that a larger proportion of employers faced uncertain business prospects (72% in 2025, compared to 58% in 2024), and were planning for hiring freezes and wage moderation next year, compared to last year’s survey. Nonetheless, vast majority of employers employing lower-wage workers (LWWs) still planned to provide them with built-in wage increases in the coming year. 

2     About 240 employers hiring more than 120,000 workers responded to the survey, which was intended to understand employers’ latest business sentiments, manpower challenges, hiring plans, wage outlook, and HR priorities. Survey respondents were spread across 19 industries, and included a mix of small, medium-sized and large employers. Please refer to Annex A for an infographic summarising the survey results. 

Three in five employers planned headcount freeze  

3     In 2025, close to three in five employers (58%) planned to freeze headcount next year, compared to 50% in 2024 and small employers were more likely to do so (63%).1 But the proportion of employers that were planning to reduce headcount was similar to last year’s (9% in 2024, 8% in 2025), with large employers being more likely to reduce their headcount (12%).  

One in two employers planned to exercise wage moderation or wage freeze 

4     Close to half of the employers (48%) planned to implement wage moderation or wage freeze for FY2025/2026, an increase of 10 percentage-points compared to the last financial year. Employers indicated that they planned to give a lower wage increment compared to the previous year. This indicates more caution in wage outlook among employers, particularly among small and medium-sized employers. 

Rising manpower costs continued to be employers’ top manpower challenge 

5     The top manpower challenge cited by employers for the next 12 months was rising manpower costs (79%), similar to 2024 (81%). Employers also cited challenges such as attracting and retaining professionals, managers, executives and technicians (47%) and a shortage of high-skilled, local talent (42%). To alleviate these challenges, 62% of the employers surveyed planned to provide a competitive employee salary and benefits package, though this proportion had decreased compared to 70% in 2024. Other ways to alleviate manpower challenges included upskilling/reskilling employees to meet evolving business needs (45%) and providing more flexible work arrangement options (30%), although the latter saw a significant decrease from 49% in 2024.  

Majority of employers planned built-in wage increases for Lower Wage Workers (LWWs)2 despite economic uncertainty 

6     Despite the more cautious outlook, 96% of employers employing LWWs planned to provide them with built-in wage increases in the coming year, reflecting continued employer commitment to uplift this group of workers. Employers that expected not to do well in 2025 planned more modest increases than those that expected to do well. Nearly 40% of employers planned to give higher increments to LWWs than to other employees in terms of percentage, while 33% planned similar increments for all employees. The remainder indicated that other factors such as performance would be more important than differentiated wage increase based on wage levels.  

 7     “Employers are navigating 2026 cautiously, in view of rising costs of doing business and uncertainties in the overall global economy. However, it is heartening to see that many employers continue to invest in their people, especially lower-wage workers, as such investments ultimately help them build a stronger, more resilient, and future-ready workforce that can help businesses capture new opportunities in uncertain times. We encourage employers to align their wage decisions with the National Wages Council Guidelines that have just been released so that wage adjustments are fair and sustainable,” said Mr. Hao Shuo, Chief Executive Officer of SNEF. 

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About Singapore National Employers Federation 
The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) is a trade union of employers. Our mission is to advance tripartism and enhance labour market flexibility to enable employers to implement responsible employment practices for sustainable growth. SNEF has a membership of more than 3,900 companies with around 870,000 employees. For more information, please visit www.snef.org.sg. 

 Annex A