I'm a programmer and as such I can live relatively comfortably. Unless I stop getting corporate greed matching raises, at which point I have to continue learning and be more productive, look for companies employing people with an ever increasing level of seniority requirement.
I am not even thirty and I am already sick of it. I want to get better at this for my own sake, not because year after year I can get a salary increase that barely matches corporate greed.
See, this is a perspective of someone who CAN offset corporate greed. Even I am sick of this. Salary increases matching corporate greed are not enough, have never been enough, and will never be enough if you're also improving. If I have improved 10%, pay me 10% more, then add another 15% for this year's corporate greed. But actually since I plan on having a home at some point and prices are going crazy, make that 25%.
So, for me to get a 10% actual increase of salary, I would need to get a 35% salary increase from 2021 to 2022 considering housing prices in my area. This means the companies I work for would have to up their prices too if they don't want to deaccelerate their scalping, but that's all for the better – their customers are other companies anyways.