Are you located outside the US? The job market might be local to the US.

I thought that myself but I was wrong (or at least it didn't matter as much as I thought it did). I was heavy on telecom/phone app development, there's not much out there. But I had enough web and system dev that I got a bunch of recruiters contacting me about those opportunities.

Out of curiosity, what do you consider your skills? What languages or frameworks you have experience with? Keep in mind that often your skill with a particular language is not what they're looking for - many of us have changed jobs to a place that used a language that was new to us.

Nobody cares what your internal performance rating is. People are desperate for warm bodies. Start apply, start talking to recruiters. You will get paid more, you can do this.

If you're an even remotely competent developer in a language used by more than one company, have a reasonably firm grasp of the English language, can work with others reasonably well, and can be bothered to apply for jobs, then there are definitely plenty of opportunities for your skills. Plenty of companies don't even care about the language, they figure you'll pick it up. The only way this isn't true is if you are already hugely overpaid or if you come off terrible in interviews. A year ago I would have said "or are a convicted felon" but I think plenty of companies don't even care about that anymore, that's how huge demand is. You don't even have to live somewhere with jobs anymore so long as you have a reliable Internet connection!

If you just sit around letting your current company take advantage of you, and complaining about not getting a big enough raise you definitely won't find those opportunities though. You have to interview a lot.

In the current company? Bad idea. They're not likely to ever value you like a fresh company would.