employers in Singapore<\/a> (51%) plan to implement wage moderation or a wage freeze in 2027, up from 48% in 2026, according to The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF)’s Survey on Wage and Employment Outlook 2026\/2027.<\/p>\nThe findings point to continued caution in employers’ wage outlook, particularly amongst small and medium-sized enterprises, even as business expectations show signs of improvement.<\/p>\n
The proportion of employers expecting uncertain business prospects in 2027 fell to 63% from 72% in 2026.<\/p>\n
At the same time, 65% of companies expect to perform well in 2026, compared with 63% in 2025.<\/p>\n
On hiring, 54% of employers said they are not planning to increase headcount, whilst 40% intend to hire more workers. The remaining 6% plan to reduce headcount.<\/p>\n
Amongst companies employing lower-wage workers, 86% said they remain committed to providing built-in wage increases in 2027, down from 96% in 2026.<\/p>\n
The remaining 14% plan a wage freeze, whilst none of the employers surveyed intends to implement wage cuts in 2027.<\/p>\n
Rising costs remained the top manpower challenge, cited by 83% of employers in 2026, up from 79% in 2025.<\/p>\n
Concerns over the rising cost of upskilling and reskilling workers also increased to 30% from 23%.<\/p>\n
However, labour market tightness eased compared with a year earlier.<\/p>\n
The proportion of employers reporting difficulties in attracting and retaining professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) fell to 41% from 47%, whilst those citing a shortage of local high-skilled talent declined to 35% from 42%.<\/p>\n
Despite easing labour market pressures, attracting suitable talent remained employers’ top human resources priority at 59%.<\/p>\n
More employers also identified the exploration, adoption, and enhancement of artificial intelligence as a priority, rising to 48% in 2027 from 39% in 2026, alongside efforts to upskill and reskill employees.<\/p>\n
The survey was conducted between June and August 2026 and gathered responses from more than 300 companies employing close to 160,000 workers across 20 industries, representing a mix of small, medium-sized and large enterprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising manpower costs remain employers’ top manpower challenge. More than half of employers in Singapore (51%) plan to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-589635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}