The Cost of "Living".

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You guys are getting raises?
- You guys have jobs?
  
  Unemployment rate is historically low in most ("western") countries
- As a union member, yes.
  
  must be nice to have a union that gives a shit about their members
- Yearly.
  I’ve had 3 this year alone, but usually it’s just the one below inflation one.
  But I live in Australia.
- Its been like 3 years since the last one for me and that was a .50 cent across the board one that was basically bullshit. Time before that was another 3 years and it was 3%... I did get 2 large raises in the past 10 years though, but those were basically given because we were already wayyyy behind the industry standard for our positions.
- My company gave across the board 7% raises in lieu of bonuses this year.

"You got a pay cut!"
- "Now say thank you"
  
  I was once told “Now I never want to hear about a raise again.” like the sub-inflation raise was enough to cover the rest of my time there and the three years of no raises preceding it.

My last job (just left it), kept giving small raises every year. I made a chart showing my actual salary against real dollars over time and the very quickly falling downard trend over the four years of been there. The admins were just like "so?"
It took a bit, but I'm off to a new job. Fuck that place.

Got a 0.96% raise for the year. I'm still staying there because of the great health insurance and it's mostly WFH though. I'll just work less to make up for it.
- This is the way
  
  No absolutely no they then furn to treat you like shit so they squeeze more.from you. The relationship employee business ahould be simbiotic not a tug of war. Pay me fairly for reasonable amount of hours and I'll gladly work.

This is standard where I work but getting promoted gives a decent raise to make up for it. It's a shame for them that I don't want anymore responsibility though, so I just work less hard each year based on inflation.

I recognize this is harder said than done particularly in the market since at least 2008. Advice I got early in my career is to swap jobs on average every 3 years and negotiate for at least a 20% increase each time. So far it's worked pretty good.

Raises aren't supposed to cover inflation silly. How do you think they're supposed to turn a profit like that?
- Can't have infinite growth if they did!

I haven't had a pay rise since 2020. Instead my employer forced us to sign a fake "part time contract" so he can pay us 50% legally and the other 50% illegally (cash) so he doesn't pay taxes. I hate my job.
- why haven't any of you reported that
- I hate my job.
  You're not alone.
- If you're in the US and you or your coworkers are anywhere near retirement age, your employer is screwing people out of Social Security income. It's based on the amount you make on average over a certain number of years of working. If the amount reported and taxed as Social Security income is less than your actual income, it can affect your payments.
  If the system is still solvent when you retire, that is.

I got a pay raise, but I will get it gradually distributed in the next 6 years 👍

Spot on

My last raise was by $1 / hour. Accounting for inflation, even with the raise, I'm making $3 / hour less than I was when I last got a raise. I'm working for a little mom and pop business and they are good people, but they cannot do basic economic math.

That’s by design

They gave us raises then cut everyone's hours 🙃

In one generation it's really changed from being a place where workers were valued and trained or developed. Now we are all ( and even many specialized jobs ),in a society where you are an undervalued disposable cog in the big wheel. Employers no longer care if you vanish. I've seen so many examples where they hire in someone new to replace the guru who quit that was utterly done with management and policy. The new person tries but has sparse training and unless they are a go getter they spew errors into the system rampantly. This is ignored by management while on time delivery slips past the goal posts. There's no documentation - this step gets skipped. I'm currently in a fortune 500 company and mostly just removed about my gripes but how we run a business using the "everyone is disposable" mentality is costing companies billions. Senior management does not care.
- GenX checking in. I know so many Boomers who got factory jobs with pensions out of high school and stayed with them for 35 or 40 years. They were able to raise families on a single income (or maybe have a spouse who worked part-time). They had nice homes, new-ish cars, and could afford to take their families on vacations. They built equity and were able to upgrade to McMansions in the late '90s and early '00s.
  Meanwhile, my friends and I have advanced degrees and we have to look for new jobs every 5 years just to try to beat inflation.
  Our parents climbed the ladder our grandparents built, and then they pulled it up after them. At this point, none of us can afford to quit working to care for them as they age, so anything we would have inherited will likely be paid to nursing homes.
  Hooray for late-stage capitalism, I guess?
- The new person tries but has sparse training
  God I hate this. The company doesn't care about its workers so they leave. The workplace has high turnover so the company doesn't want to train anyone. The people with job experience are golden and everyone else has to be highly educated just for a chance to get job experience. This is becoming true of even entry-level jobs.

33 comments