{"id":106256,"date":"2026-08-26T16:12:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=106256"},"modified":"2026-08-26T16:13:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:13:29","slug":"no-pay-raise-this-year-7-in-10-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/money-and-finance\/finance\/no-pay-raise-this-year-7-in-10-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"No Pay Raise This Year? Nearly 7 in 10 Workers Got Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 24 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You did the work. You covered for the person who left and never got replaced. The review went fine. Everyone said the right things.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then the payslip arrived and it was the same payslip.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you got no pay raise this year, the quiet assumption most people make is that it was personal. That somewhere in a meeting you were not in, someone decided you were not worth it. That assumption is almost always wrong, and there is now a large pile of data to prove it.<\/p>\n\n<h2>No Pay Raise? You Are Not the Exception. You Are the Majority.<\/h2>\n\n<p>The recruitment firm Morgan McKinley surveyed 2,799 workers and 214 employers and published the results in early July 2026. Nearly 70% of employees said they had not received a salary increase in the previous six months. A year earlier, that figure was 65%.<\/p>\n\n<p>So it moved. Not dramatically. But it moved in the direction that hurts.<\/p>\n\n<p>Read that number again, because the shape of it matters more than the size. It is not a slice. It is not a struggling minority. It is roughly seven out of every ten people you work near, walk past, and quietly compare yourself to.<\/p>\n\n<p>Whatever story you have been telling yourself about why the raise did not come, the story has to account for that.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"c87e3ed518\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/c87e3ed518\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Half of Employers Say They Did Give Raises. Both Sides Are Telling the Truth.<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the part of that same survey almost nobody quotes, and it is the most useful thing in it.<\/p>\n\n<p>While nearly 70% of employees reported no increase, 48% of employers said their organisation had increased pay. Nearly three-quarters of employers said increases were planned for specific roles over the coming year. More than half said they kept offers for new hires flat compared with the year before.<\/p>\n\n<p>Put those together and the contradiction dissolves.<\/p>\n\n<p>Raises did happen. They happened to <em>specific roles<\/em>. Targeted, narrow, defensible on a spreadsheet. Which means an enormous number of people spent this year watching money move somewhere in the building and not toward them.<\/p>\n\n<p>The researchers put it carefully: employees experience pay stagnation more acutely than employer data alone would imply. That is a polite way of describing something sharper. Getting nothing is one kind of disappointment. Getting nothing while someone two desks away gets something is a different kind entirely, and it is not really about the money at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is comparison. And comparison is a much older problem than the current job market \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/why-cant-stop-comparing-yourself-to-others\/\">there is a reason it is so hard to stop doing<\/a>, and it has almost nothing to do with willpower.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Detail That Surprised Me: Almost Half Still Expect a Raise<\/h2>\n\n<p>You would think a year like this would flatten people. It did not.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the same survey, nearly half of employees said they were optimistic about getting a raise within the next twelve months.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is a genuinely strange finding. These are people who just went six months with nothing, in a market where they can see the increases going to other roles, and roughly half of them still expect their turn.<\/p>\n\n<p>You can read that as denial. I do not think it is. It looks much more like the ordinary human refusal to accept that a hard season is the permanent shape of things \u2014 which, as it happens, is usually the correct read. Most hard seasons are not permanent. The trouble is that they never announce their end date in advance.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Where You Live Changes the Whole Picture<\/h2>\n\n<p>Now here is where it gets genuinely interesting, and where most coverage of this story gets it wrong by assuming everyone lives in the same place.<\/p>\n\n<p>Gallup&#8217;s State of the Global Workplace report, published in 2026 and covering 2025, found that global employee engagement fell to 20% \u2014 its lowest level since 2020. Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the world economy around 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity.<\/p>\n\n<p>But the mood is not evenly spread.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worldwide, 52% of workers said it was a good time to find a job where they live. That figure actually improved by one point from the year before, though it sits below the 2019 peak of 55%.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the United States and Canada, it was 47% \u2014 down ten points in a single year. Australia and New Zealand dropped twelve. Southeast Asia held the strongest outlook of any region.<\/p>\n\n<p>So the despair you are reading about online is, to a significant degree, a regional story being told in a global voice. If you are in Nairobi, Lagos, Manila or Dubai, the labour market you are actually standing in may look very little like the one described in the headlines you are reading.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is worth knowing before you let someone else&#8217;s economy decide how hopeful you are allowed to be about yours.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Why Staying Put Stopped Feeling Safe<\/h2>\n\n<p>Not long ago the sensible move was to hold on. We <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/job-hugging-staying-put-out-of-fear\/\">wrote about that trend when 57% of workers admitted they were staying put out of fear rather than loyalty<\/a> \u2014 gripping the job tightly, not because it was good, but because letting go looked worse.<\/p>\n\n<p>What this year&#8217;s numbers add is the bill for that strategy.<\/p>\n\n<p>When you stay somewhere out of fear, and then the raise does not come, you are left holding a job you did not choose freshly, at a price you did not agree to, with the exit you already talked yourself out of. Gallup&#8217;s engagement figure \u2014 one in five workers actually engaged \u2014 is what that arrangement looks like when you measure it across a whole planet.<\/p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile, 67% of employers in the Morgan McKinley survey said they had seen staff leave in the previous six months, and 19% pointed to how pay was perceived as a factor. People are moving. Just not always the people who most want to.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you are somewhere between those two states \u2014 too tired to stay, too uncertain to go \u2014 it may be worth finding out which one you are actually in. Our free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/am-i-burned-out-at-work\/\">Am I Burned Out at Work? assessment<\/a> takes a few minutes and is more honest than most workplace surveys, mainly because nobody at your company sees the result.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Question Underneath the Number<\/h2>\n\n<p>There is a very old line about money that gets quoted whenever someone wants to sound wise about wealth. It says that whoever loves money never has enough of it.<\/p>\n\n<p>People usually hear that as a warning about greed. It is not. It is an observation about arithmetic.<\/p>\n\n<p>A number can tell you what you earn. It cannot tell you what you are worth. And it will keep failing at that job no matter how large the number gets.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is the real reason a missing raise can hurt out of all proportion to the money involved. The raise was never only money. It was the closest thing most workplaces have to a sentence that says <em>we see you, and you matter here<\/em>. When that sentence does not arrive, the mind goes looking for a verdict somewhere else, and the verdict it reaches for is almost always harsher than the facts deserve.<\/p>\n\n<p>The oldest wisdom on this puts the verdict somewhere the payroll cannot reach. It says a person&#8217;s value was settled long before the job existed, by God rather than by a compensation review, and does not move when the budget does.<\/p>\n\n<p>You do not have to believe anything to notice how much lighter a week becomes when your worth is not up for review.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Actually Helps When the Raise Does Not Come<\/h2>\n\n<p>None of this costs money, which matters, because the people hit hardest by a flat year are rarely the people with spare cash to fix it.<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Separate the two hurts.<\/strong> Write down what the missing money actually changes this month \u2014 a bill, a plan, a delay. Then write down what it made you feel about yourself. Those are two different problems, and only one of them is solved by money.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ask what happened, not why you were skipped.<\/strong> &#8220;Were increases targeted to specific roles this year?&#8221; is a question a manager can answer honestly. &#8220;Why didn&#8217;t I get one?&#8221; invites a defensive non-answer.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Write down what you did this year, now, while you remember it.<\/strong> Not for a performance review. For you. A flat year erases the evidence of your own work faster than you expect.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Check the market where you actually live.<\/strong> Not the market in the headlines. The regional gaps in the Gallup data are wide enough that a global mood can be badly wrong about your street.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix the sleep before the job.<\/strong> Money worry does most of its damage between midnight and four in the morning, and almost none of the decisions made in those hours are good ones.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Discussion Question<\/h2>\n\n<p>If a company can only fund raises for a few roles, what is the fairest way to decide who gets one \u2014 the people doing the hardest work, the people hardest to replace, or the people paid least? There is no clean answer, which is exactly why it is worth arguing about. Tell us what you would do in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"c87e3ed518\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/c87e3ed518\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Nearly 7 in 10 workers got no pay raise in the last six months. Almost half of employers say they gave raises. Both are true, and that gap explains a lot about why this year felt the way it did. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/money-and-finance\/finance\/no-pay-raise-this-year-7-in-10-workers\/<\/li>\n<li>Turns out &#8220;nobody got a raise this year&#8221; and &#8220;we increased pay&#8221; are both accurate statements. Raises went to specific roles. Everyone else watched. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/money-and-finance\/finance\/no-pay-raise-this-year-7-in-10-workers\/<\/li>\n<li>The bit that stopped me: after six months of nothing, almost half of workers still expect a raise within the year. Not denial \u2014 just the ordinary refusal to treat a hard season as permanent. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/money-and-finance\/finance\/no-pay-raise-this-year-7-in-10-workers\/<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Questions People Ask About Not Getting a Raise<\/h2>\n\n<h3>What percentage of workers got no pay raise in 2026?<\/h3>\n<p>In a Morgan McKinley survey of 2,799 workers and 214 employers published in early July 2026, nearly 70% of employees said they had not received a salary increase in the previous six months. That was up from 65% who said the same a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n<h3>If most workers got no raise, why do employers say they increased pay?<\/h3>\n<p>Both statements can be accurate at the same time. In the Morgan McKinley survey published in July 2026, 48% of employers said their organisation had increased pay, and nearly three-quarters said increases were planned for specific roles in the coming year. Raises were targeted at particular positions rather than applied across the workforce, so most employees saw nothing while the organisation could still truthfully report that it had raised pay.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Is it a bad time to look for a new job?<\/h3>\n<p>It depends heavily on where a person lives. Gallup&#8217;s State of the Global Workplace report published in 2026 found that 52% of workers worldwide believed it was a good time to find a job locally \u2014 a figure that improved by one point from the previous year. In the United States and Canada it was 47%, down ten points in a single year, while Southeast Asia recorded the strongest outlook of any region. A global headline about a bad job market can be badly wrong about a specific country.<\/p>\n\n<h3>How much does low employee engagement cost?<\/h3>\n<p>Gallup&#8217;s State of the Global Workplace report published in 2026 found that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, and estimated that low engagement cost the world economy around 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity. That figure is an estimate produced by Gallup, not a directly measured amount.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Why does not getting a raise hurt more than the money involved?<\/h3>\n<p>Because a raise carries two things at once: money, and confirmation that a person&#8217;s work is seen and valued. When it does not arrive, the financial gap is usually manageable, but the missing confirmation sends people looking for a verdict on their own worth \u2014 and the verdict they reach for is typically far harsher than the situation warrants. Separating the practical loss from the felt judgment is what makes a flat year survivable.<\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"106256\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: none;\" class=\"twp-react-count\">0<\/span>\n                        \n                                                <span 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Nearly 7 in 10 workers say the same, while half of employers insist they gave raises. Here is what that strange gap really means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7698],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106258,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106256\/revisions\/106258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}