SINGAPORE – Fresh out of the National University of Singapore with a data science degree in May 2025, Luqman Naqib spent nine months sending about 300 job applications.After repeated rejections, an offer arrived. The tech role paid $3,500 a month – well below the $5,000 median gross salary for graduates from his course, according to the latest Graduate Employment Survey at the time.The 25-year-old was tempted to accept it. With no guarantee another offer would come, he faced a simple question: Was the salary fair?To benchmark the offer, he turned to friends and former coursemates. What he found surprised him.“They were getting offers below what they expected too,” Luqman told The Straits Times.“And I have some very smart, very hardworking coursemates, but even they didn’t negotiate their salary. They took any offer that came, even though they did not like the job or their salary. It felt like they were undervaluing their skillset and worth.”The experience inspired Luqman, now an artificial intelligence engineer at a health-tech start-up, to build Lowball (sglowball.vercel.app). It is a website designed to help job seekers determine whether they are being “lowballed” – a term which describes being offered a salary significantly below the current market rate for similar roles.Lowball is a website designed to help job seekers determine whether they are being offered a salary significantly below the current market rate for similar roles. PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM LOWBALLOver two weekends in March, he gathered thousands of listings scraped from Singapore’s MyCareersFuture portal.The tool indexes more than 200,000 job postings, allowing users to benchmark an offer against similar roles. He hopes it will address what he sees as a lack of transparent, real-time salary information for job seekers.“In Singapore, talking about our salaries is often taboo, but I realise that young people like me appreciate openness. I hope there is greater transparency for fair salaries. Employees can use the data to evaluate their offers and employers can use it to determine if they are offering a competitive salary,” he said.Salary growth in Singapore slowed in 2025, according to data from the Ministry of Manpower. Nominal wages rose 4.9 per cent in 2025, slower than the 5.6 per cent recorded in 2024, even though real wages grew by 4 per cent, up from 3.2 per cent the year before.Nominal wages are the amount of money you earn while real wages reflect what that money can actually buy after accounting for inflation.For instance, if your salary rises from $50,000 to $52,000 (about 4 per cent nominal increase) between 2025 and 2026, but the annual inflation is 6 per cent, you can actually afford less despite earning more money.Fewer firms also increased pay over the year, with 72.4 per cent reporting wage increases compared with 78.3 per cent previously.James was offered a monthly salary of $3,400 instead of the advertised $6,000. PHOTO: JAMESJob seeker James (not his real name), who is in his 20s, said he had applied for a tech role with an advertised monthly pay of $6,000. But after discussions, the fresh grad was offered $3,400 instead.“A $6,000 monthly salary is obviously very attractive, but I did not expect to be handed it. I believed that a fair range would be quoted.“For the salary to be haggled down to $3,400 right off the bat was very aggravating because some traineeship programmes pay about $4,000… (The recruiters) are treating job hunters like produce at a market stall to haggle over,” he said.For others, desperation for a stable job outweighs concerns about pay.After a five-month job hunt, Andrew (not his real name) accepted a lower-than-expected offer without negotiating. He discovered only later that junior colleagues doing similar work were earning more than him.Recruitment experts told ST that companies have been in cost-cutting mode over the last few years amid economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions.Hiring decisions and budgets are now more closely scrutinised, which can result in salaries that appear to be lowball offers, said Akshay Mendon, director of leadership hiring at global executive search and talent advisory firm Mercuri Urval.He noted that some job seekers are accepting offers 10 to 20 per cent below their previous salaries, often because of restructuring or job insecurity.Mendon said such offers are usually driven by internal pay structures rather than intentional cost-cutting.Large organisations rely on structured salary bands to maintain fair and equal compensation for employees doing similar work. Exceeding them typically requires multiple approvals, pushing companies to stay within limits even when market rates shift.He said this is not limited to one sector. Employers are generally less willing to exceed salary bands in human resources, information technology and finance, where talent pools are larger and employers have greater leverage.Labour market conditions also shape offers, with employers often leaning towards the lower end of pay bands for unemployed candidates.In fast-changing sectors such as data centres and artificial intelligence, salary benchmarks have moved quickly, widening gaps between internal pay ranges and market expectations.Mendon added that lingering uncertainty from the Covid-19 pandemic, and wars and trade tensions have made employers increasingly cautious about hiring costs and wage growth.For candidates who suspect they have received a low offer, determining the true market rate can be challenging, said Stuart Clark, managing director of contracting and interim solutions at executive search firm Ethos BeathChapman.Clark advised candidates to assess total compensation – not just base salary – as bonuses, equity, benefits and flexibility can materially change an offer’s value. He also suggested using benchmarking tools such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn Salary, while cautioning that self-reported data may be imperfect.Speaking with peers and recruiters, he added, often provides a more accurate read of current pay levels.If an offer appears lower than expected, candidates should first recognise it as a positive sign that the employer wants to hire them.Consider whether the package is one they would still feel satisfied with six to 12 months in the future, rather than focusing only on the immediate outcome.Candidates who wish to negotiate should do so professionally by expressing appreciation for the offer, clearly explaining their position and allowing the employer to respond.Avoid using ultimatums or allowing emotions to drive the discussion. As most hiring managers expect some level of negotiation, a well-reasoned counter-offer is unlikely to damage the relationship.At the same time, candidates should know when to walk away when a negotiation falls through. If the employer has declined a reasonable, professionally delivered request, walking away is not a failure. Not every role is the right fit at every stage, and holding out for alignment on compensation sets a healthier foundation than accepting under duress.Tips provided by Stuart Clark, managing director of contracting and interim solutions at Ethos BeathChapman.