You have value as a worker. Your employer won't help you out unless you force their hand.
For context, I'm an engineer working in the automotive industry and I've been working for the same company in the same position for a few years since graduating college. I wasn't passionate about my job, but it wasn't stressful on a daily basis and afforded me a good standard of living. Every year I received a positive performance review along with a 3% raise in pay (just barely above annual inflation, but it felt good).
Flash forward to this last November. Another “lateral” position opened up in the company in a different department slightly outside my area of expertise. Nevertheless, they urgently needed to place someone in the position, and I was told I was the go-to choice for the job. The best part was that it came with a 5% pay bump! Again, it felt good to get the pay increase and be told I was valuable. However, come January, I received another positive performance review but did not receive any additional increase to my salary. I was told that, because I made the lateral move to another position, the company bundled my annual raise with an additional 2% raise for taking the new position back in November.
This made sense to me, and I was content with the situation, except for the fact that, as many of you know, the year-over-year inflation hit 7.5% in February. I pointed this out to my HR and asked why I would take on new positions and responsibilities in the company if I was going to effectively take a 2.5% decrease in QOL. My HR maintained that, even though my pay increase wasn't as high as inflation, it was still competitive with other jobs in the area. After pushing the issue twice I was turned down and told that we could broach the subject at the start of Q4.
In response to my HR's reluctance to take action I updated my resume and scheduled several interviews. The labor market is really leaning in favor of the worker right now, and I was able to secure two separate job offers after a couple of weeks, both of which had a higher salary than my current job. On a Wednesday I took these offers to my HR and informed them I intended to accept one of the positions by Friday to which they asked if there was anything which would get me to stay. I told them that, if they could match either of the two offers and give me an extra week of PTO then of course I would consider staying. Within four hours they came back with a counter-offer for 12% more than what my salary was just a few months ago.
Our current economic system is set up to incentivize decision based on financial benefits. Your company isn't going to do anything for you unless they're incentivized to do so, and sometimes that means going out of your way to force a decision.
Good luck out there!