WTW’s latest Salary Budget Planning Survey reveals that U.S. employers expect average salary budgets to hold at 3.4% for 2026, matching the increase realized in 2025. The survey, conducted between September and November 2025, drew 1,876 U.S. respondents within a global sample of 36,960 companies across 156 countries. Nearly 62% of those U.S. employers have left their original pay budgets unchanged since mid-2025, while 6% have increased budgets and 21% plan reductions. Among companies adjusting projections, 36% cite cost management concerns, 36% anticipate recessionary pressures or weaker financial results, 32% point to a tight labor market and 25% refer to residual inflationary pressures. WTW highlights that organizations are shifting from uniform increases to targeted rewards for high-impact contributors, with leaders emphasizing governance, sophisticated market data analysis and internal equity to drive compensation decisions.

Willis, a WTW business, collaborated with Oxford Analytica on a report analyzing five economic risks facing defense contractors: trade-off between scale and national control; tariff wars disrupting supply chains; reliance on Chinese materials such as rare earths; phantom spending where budget pledges may not materialize; and challenges in reestablishing domestic industrial capacity. The study, based on interviews with senior defense executives, warns that debt-to-GDP ratios now exceed 100% across major markets in Europe, North America and Japan, creating fiscal pressures that could trigger social backlash against higher defense spending or lead governments toward inflationary or repressive financial measures. Willis projects that these dynamics may strain long-term procurement commitments, and urges firms to adjust strategies around supply-chain resilience and political risk management to sustain operations under evolving macroeconomic constraints.