Maybe we all came out ahead. I used to commute 20 minutes in each direction, every single day. (OK, often longer when there were subway problems.) That made

Maybe we all came out ahead. I used to commute 20 minutes in each direction, every single day. (OK, often longer when there were subway problems.) That made my 2000 hour work-year into 2166 hours of non-personal time a year. If you take your pay and you prorate your salary for 2166 hours of work to 2000 hours of work, that's a 7.7% hit. But, we only took a 6.2% hit. So maybe the whole "pandemic caused inflation, and pandemic caused remote work to be a real thing" evens out. You could look at it like a 0.9% raise. And, I think my 20 minute commute was atypical... if you were commuting 2 hours a day, you just won the lottery. As likely many other replies have mentioned, if you want more money, you should ask for it. Or find a higher bidder. That's the market; your goal is to receive the maximum amount of money for your work, and people buying your work are incentivized to take the lowest price you'll offer them. The economy did a sneaky sneak and changed the value of the dollar, but it wasn't so sneaky that you didn't notice. So, do something about it!