Not only did my pay change not match inflation this year, but my overall income is lower now since I am now salary based position instead of hourly, but I end up working more than 40 hours a week due to degradation of our company and rapidly losing talent due to paying everyone well below industry average. I might technically make more per hour, but now I don't get any overtime like before.

The replacements for the talent leaving are way under qualified and even if they were qualified, we still wouldn't have enough people to handle things adequately beyond putting out fires.

I keep an eye on my finances. At this point, my net monthly income is breaking even only accounting for planned, repeatable, or necessary costs. When rent contract renews later this year, my rent will increase by over $1000/mo. With how the economics of the next couple of years looks like, I'm pretty stressed out.

My manager says I'm sadly at the top of the pay grade scale for our department and it can only change year over year by at most 10%. He says he wished it were different but it's all he can do. If nothing were to change for years, I would never reach close to industry average for this position for my area, which is rapidly getting more expensive in the past few years.