S’pore firms offer up to a 20% salary raise for switching jobs. Here are the top-paying ones.

Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. Data sourced from RGF Professional Recruitment Salary Watch 2025.

In spite of recent media reports proclaiming the end of job-hopping for higher pay, it turns out that some industries are still willing to offer a bonus to qualified people just to poach them away from competitors—at least in Singapore, according to the recently released RGF’s Salary Watch 2025 report (RGF is a part of a major Japanese HR tech holding, Recruit Group, which also owns companies like Indeed or Glassdoor).

The company focuses on mid-to-senior-level recruitment across four major industry groups: Industrial Manufacturing, Consumer Goods & Retail, Healthcare & Life Sciences, and Corporate Services—and this is what we have data for here.

Unyielding demand for talent

The reason Singapore might be a bit of an outlier, while other countries report narrowing gaps between job-switchers and loyal employees, is the compressed nature of the city-state.

It’s tightly packed with many international companies, which are facing local shortages of talent, even if they might be laying people off in other locations.

According to an earlier survey by ManpowerGroup, Singapore’s talent shortage is among the worst in the world, as reported by a staggering 83% of employers. Little over a decade ago, it was just 25%.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that employers are trying to lure good candidates from other companies by offering them a substantial reward for switching jobs.

Here’s the breakdown by industry, as provided by RGF:

As always, the ultimate offer, of course, depends on the job and skill set of the hire. Here are the hot jobs in each of these industries for 2025:

Hot jobs & skills

Consumer Goods & Retail

Corporate Services

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Industrial Manufacturing

As you can see, there seems to be something for almost everybody. Those with hard technical or scientific skills, those with soft skills in HR, those in sales and marketing, those in senior positions and those outside of management, in both large companies and SMEs alike.

If you command the right skills and there’s a demonstrable shortage for talents like you, you can expect an incentive to switch from just under 10% all the way up to 20% in the most generous companies.

With salaries in Singapore growing, on average, by single digits each year, jumping the boat is still tempting.

And even if you like your current workplace, it doesn’t hurt to shop around and find out what you might be really worth, before coming back to your employer to negotiate a bigger raise to stay rather than leave. Good luck!

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