I also want to point out that inflation at 5% doesn't mean your income needs to go up 5%. Let's take $100k, say you pay 25% tax. That's $75k left. Let's say you have a mortgage, car payment and those are fixed. $35k. Let's say you save $10k. That leaves you with $30k. For your case, you only need a raise to have $1500 extra. So a new salary of $102k or 2% raise. I'm not trying to make case for employers, just want to point out that you might not be losing money at rate of 5% yearly by earning less. The real loss actually comes from your savings in the bank earning 0%.

So will you rather 2% raise and earn 5% on your savings or get 5% raise and earn 0% on your savings?