Professionals have long been taught a simple formula for career success: work hard, outperform your peers, and bigger paychecks will follow. But this year, employers are planning to reward their star staffers differently; instead of factoring in merit, more companies are considering general pay hikes spread out evenly, dubbed the “peanut butter raises” trend.
Around 44% of employers plan to roll out uniform, across-the-board wage bumps in 2026, according to a new Payscale report. About 16% of organizations are newly implementing these “peanut butter” raises: 9% say they already employ the pay strategy, and another 18% of organizations are considering it this year. And top-performing companies are all in on the approach. Around 56% of organizations that reported that they would exceed their revenue goals in 2025 are using or actively considering peanut butter pay increases.
Companies are still planning to boost employee pay by 3.5%, the same rate as last year. And while 48% of businesses will continue the tradition of awarding pay bumps based on worker performance—which the report describes as a “best practice”—the new compensation fad may be trying to alleviate financial headwinds for low-paid workers.
