I have never received an inflation beating raise, not once in my life, and I’m 50 years old. The only way to get good raises is to job hop. And anyway, 3%CPI? Have they done any food shopping in the past year?
In my 40’s and pretty similar experience. Raises are always 3-5%, with several years where they didn’t even meet that. Hell, I remember one year having manager take me out to lunch and explain to me that the company wasn’t doing any raises that year. The following year I had a new job at ~20% higher salary. And companies wonder why workers have no loyalty anymore. In the end, the only thing that has kept my salary rising faster than inflation is to job hop every 3-5 years. I’d rather not. Hell, I like the company I’m at now and they talk a fantastic game about building a long term career. We’ll see how that pans out come raise time.
I take any long-term pipe dreams with a grain of salt nowadays. I spent 3 years “just six more months” at a time because I believed the owner of the company. Never again.
Saw a store selling a gallon of milk for $7. Was an “upscale” grocery store, but come on. Half a load of bread from the bakery was $8. Where is the other half of my bread?! I walked out
Yeah. While I do feel like the impacts of inflation are slowly slightly (maximum price gouging achieved), 3% CPI has to be some wildly-creative math.
Get back to me when we’ve corrected the last 30 years of wage stagnation too
I’ve worked 2 manufacturing jobs in the past 2 years, and know others that work at other factories. We have not received raises that track with inflation, ever. I know this is anecdotal, but lived experiences often differ to what stats are cited.
Some good news
Raises for lower-income workers were particularly strong in early 2023. Restaurants, hotels and similar businesses hired at a brisk pace to cater to customers eager for services that were limited initially in the Covid-19 pandemic. While leisure and hospitality employment gains have slowed in recent months, workers in the industry saw their hourly pay rise faster than overall wage growth and inflation.
Wages for manufacturing and business-services workers are also outpacing inflation. Pay gains have been narrower in the tech-heavy information sector, where several large companies have cut staff.
Where? My rent has gone up $200 for the third year in a row. Over 5 years my rent has gone up 33%, meanwhile my pay has only gone up 25%.
Renting is often more expensive monthly than owning a home. Obviously this differs by area, but particularly as you get out of the city, homes get downright inexpensive.
I don’t think this is true at the moment (with interest rates) or in cities, as a rule. A 2-bedroom apartment rents for $3K but sells for $1M+ where I live in the Boston area, so a mortgage payment would be at least double our rent :(
I’m at the point where I very much want to own a home - emotionally - but it’s hard to justify financially.
yep. my apartment is 2500 a month. but it would sell for almost a million bucks.
2500 gets me a 400K house at best, which is a tear-down.
speak for yourself. in my local market real estate prices have gone up 50% in 3 years. and rents have only gone up 20%
It’s entirely dependent on housing stock supply.
In a lot of cities, new housing development is deliberately surpressed, which in turn causes rent to skyrocket. In other areas, where land is still cheap, its very often cheaper (in the long run, maybe 10-20 years) to just get a mortgage to buy or build a house because newer housing stock is still being put into the system to which helps regulate the max price landlords can get away with before people just start building their own homes or buying new one from developers.
CPI does not include housing costs
The CPI has been changed over and over to deliberately understate inflation. Hedonics and owners equivalent rent stand out particularly strongly
Yet comparisons of methodologies show little difference.
Right, they did it for fun. Not to keep COLA low, or any other perverse incentive the government has.
They published their reasons for methodology adjustments. But you’ve made up your mind regardless of the facts.
CPI doesn’t include the data it includes now?
We should really stop calling inflation adjustment “raises”
Cool, I’ll print this out and share it with my employer
:(
Correct me if I’m mistaken but if EVERYONE gets raises beating inflation, doesn’t that make inflation worse?
That’s why in IT field workers don’t trust unions and we just job hop every 2 years give or take
Been outpacing inflation for several months now.
