Wage Enshittification

A specific form of wage deterioration where compensation not only fails to keep pace with costs but actively degrades in quality, reliability, and purchasing power over time. Drawing on the broader concept of enshittification (the tendency of platforms and systems to become progressively worse for users once they're locked in), Wage Enshittification describes how employers gradually erode compensation while workers remain trapped by lack of alternatives. Benefits are cut, hours are reduced, base pay is frozen while inflation rises, overtime is eliminated, bonuses become impossible targets—each change small enough to not trigger resistance, cumulative enough to produce steady immiseration. The wage doesn't just stay low; it actively rots.

Wage Enshittification Example: "When she started, the job paid enough to live. Five years later, with 'cost-saving adjustments,' benefit cuts, and inflation, she made less in real terms than at the beginning—not stagnation, but Wage Enshittification, the active decay of compensation."

Wage Enshittification by Dumu The Void March 12, 2026