I think inflation is a part of it. There is more money around but always the same internal reluctance to give raises that match the market. So higher inflation implies that more people have to switch jobs in order to take advantage.
The worst part is that some workers are being completely left behind and the divide grows greater. Tech jobs have kept up and exploded over inflation rates while retail and gig economy jobs are now paying unliveable rates.
IMO there _needs_ to be a complete recalculation of costs of living for the current year and an adjustment of minimum wages to reflect this.
The thing that I think would be the biggest help in equalizing skill, inflation, value, cost of living, etc is information. We need to break out of this bubble that has kept all of us in the dark about pricing. For physical products as well as our salaries.
We need to fight against giants that are using spam and sheer numbers to confuse pricing in the market. That applies to job boards, spam Chinese resellers, Amazon product listings, confusing Google ad prices and website listings, recruiters and heck even estate agents that thrive on information asymmetry in the market. There is huge value being lost/captured there for no reason other than a lack or restriction of information.
A ~month ago I complained in the presence of my tech lead that the raises we got this year were below inflation. Last week I got a raise above inflation.
That and the fact that I don't want to go work in blockchain/smart bulbs contribute to my decision to stay where I am for now.
