Mine as well. I know for a fact that my previous employer paid out nearly twice the raise I asked for just to the recruiter, and that's without factoring in the costs for having other employees run interviews instead of working or HR costs for bringing an employee onboard. Additionally they have to pay market rate for the replacement employee which is all I wanted in the first place! It seems like a lot of these situations where employees leave for better pay could be a win-win if companies would give just give the employees market rates or something close to it then both the employee and the company would be better off in the end.

You can be 5% off of market or even 10% if its a nice place but once you go past that, do you really expect your employees to sit there and take it? I know my landlord's not gonna wait for me to get a raise before they raise my rent

But money for the recruiter and freelancer comes out of a different bucket.

/s