Wage isn’t tied to work. Wage is based on how many other people can do your job
Wage is based on how desperate they can make you.
Do more than expected and get promoted. Get more money. Jump to another job and get more money. Rinse and repeat.
This is not how jobs work. It never has been.
Do more than expected, and that becomes your new expected output. Get the same money, over years, which doesn’t keep up with CoL and translates to a pay reduction. Jump to another job, maybe, if you can manage to do so after exhaustion from working “more than expected” and then going home to take care of life responsibility.
Yes, especially corporate America. The only raises you get are from job hopping every 1-2 years, which is ridiculous.
We’re not in the 20th century anymore. Shit doesn’t work that way for the vast majority, and even back then it only reliably worked that way if you were a white man.